Dogfish Juggling

I recently attended the International Jugglers Association (IJA) convention in Winston-Salem, NC., and the experience left me overwhelmed and overflowing.

I haven’t come up with a manageable approach to the convention as a whole, but there is one thread of thought which emerged during my time at the IJA which stands apart. On the final night of the convention, I met Erik Åberg, a member of the juggling company known as Team RdL (Renegadedesign Lab).

Team RdL put on some amazing shows during the convention, featuring some of the most innovative and impressive juggling I’ve ever seen. They preformed at both the Welcome Show at the start of the convention and the Cascade of Stars at the end.  Erik also performed during the late-night show known as Club Renegade (no relation). At Club Renegade, Erik put on a fantastic show with french juggler Florent LeStage, who also put on some fantastic performances during the IJA. Erik and Forent are both amazingly artistic performers, and they have a lot of great stuff online.

Erik and Florent’s collaboration at Club Renegade was pretty avant guard , and it was more of a show “by jugglers, for jugglers” than something geared toward the general public. Well, at least in some respects.

What intrigued me about the show, though, was Erik’s approach a combination of juggling and story telling. Shortly after taking the stage he addressed the audience and introduced the conceit of his show; to paraphrase: “What has made me a juggler?”

I won’t rehash the details of Erik’s story, but I will take a moment to ruminate on his theme.

I love this concept. Part of what interests me most about juggling is it’s universal appeal. Juggling can be a universally accessible form of artistic expression. The inherent drama of intertwining and shifting patterns–the illusion of sustaining the unsustainable –can be compelling without context and regardless of cultural differences.

And yet, at the same time, it can be intensely personal. While the balls, clubs or rings may have their own story to tell, the juggler below them is also a player in the performance. For many old-school jugglers (Enrico Rastelli, Francis Brunn, Bobby May etc.), there was a clear dynamic between these two parts. If you watch old footage of these performers, there is an immediate and  undeniable connection between prop and performer. A lot of modern-day juggling, though, seems to lack this interaction. The props have a story to tell–a path to follow–and a mechanical, uninteresting juggler stands below, a disengaged conductor.

This isn’t to say no modern manipulators are keeping the old-school prop-performer dynamic alive. Viktor Kee, for example, is an astonishingly vivid, if somewhat creepy, example of this.

But what interested me so much about Erik and Florent’s show, was that, in keeping with that compelling command from Ezra Pound–they “made it new.”  They changed the dynamic of juggling and the juggler, by putting the juggler on center stage, and relegating juggling itself to a secondary, supporting role.

There is a vast potential in this–this personalization of the universal.