Each set of circus performers provided a challenge.  In this act, I had to decide how to deal with two performers in different areas of the circus ring, and the speed of the twirling.  So, as light was a challenge anyways, the decision was to stay with the open aperture of f/2.8 and concentrate on getting one performer sharp with the support drummer blending into the background.  The slow shutter speed of 1/100 was chosen to show the motion blur on the arms and string/balls. As they were a good distance away I had to zoom out completely to 200mm.  More photos can be seen at SnappyTimes 

(Settings: f/2.8 | 1/100 sec | iso-320 | 70-200 lens @ 200mm | Canon R5ii manual settings with auto iso)