Incredible Balancing as Performance Art by Miyoko Shida

Beauty, harmony, balance ... on so many levels. A truly amazing balancing act.  Dance artist Miyoko Shida was born in Fukuyama-shi, Japan.  She performed as a dancer and choreographer at the Rigolo Nouveau Cirque in Switzerland and currently lives in Paris, France.

Balancing as defined in Wikipedia is In biomechanics, balance is an ability to maintain the line of gravity (vertical line from centre of mass) of a body within the base of support with minimal postural sway. Sway is the horizontal movement of the centre of gravity even when a person is standing still. A certain amount of sway is essential and inevitable due to small perturbations within the body (e.g., breathing, shifting body weight for one foot to the other or from forefoot to rearfoot) or from external triggers(e.g., visual distortions, floor translations). An increase in sway is not necessarily an indicator of dysfunctional balance so much as it is an indicator of decreased sensorimotor control.

 

In this video In the still at right (which is from about 9 seconds in), the woman is balancing the feather on her forefinger. She moves it back and forth and finds the spot where it stays balanced. 

The following figure shows you the gravity center and the distribution of elements to achieve the  over all balancing and to the centralized point at which your system will be balanced.

You can take some hints from the video if you want to build your own tower of books. She uses shorter sticks at the beginning. As she adds sticks, she needs larger sticks to keep the CM/CG within the balance point. If you used small books on bottom (your first “sticks”), you wouldn’t be able to extend as far as if you used larger books on the bottom.