On Friday, the juggling space opened up for a few hours and there was apparently a Renegade Show later that night.   I was, however, unable to make it to the Festival until Saturday.

The Festival took place at the Renton Community Center, which is in the South-East side of the Seattle metropolitan area.  There were about 40 or so jugglers in attendance at the open space on Saturday, and one vendor, who was selling chain mail juggling balls and fashion accessories.  A few workshops were listed for the day, though they were rather spontaneous and did not seem to follow the posted schedule.  The workshops I observed included multiplex theory and knot throwing.  One of the more interesting moments for me came when one of the festival attendees demonstrated an unusual pattern I had not seen before that he called the “Peruvian Mess”, which involved adding an inward arm fold into a mess pattern.  The juggling energy in the community center was really strong, and there was lot of really active juggling, especially club passing.  I was however, a little taken by the steep price of the event, given its relatively small size ($25 just to get into the small practice space, not including the additional $10-$15 for the juggling show).

The festival’s Cascade of Jugglers Show took place at Hale’s Palladium in Ballard, which oddly enough, was more than 20 miles away from where the festival itself was held.  Despite the long distance, the venue was a very good space for a juggling show, with a vintage-looking stage, plenty of seating, and good lighting.  The acts ranged from generic club passing and silent vaudevillian humor to more exotic acts such as break dancing and hoop isolations.  Some of the standouts included a Canadian duo executing a choreographed club swinging/takeouts dance number, and a juggling contractor doing an original routine he called “flair drywall” which involved the manipulation of a drywall knife and trough while he applied drywall mud and tape to a wall.

As a whole, I had a good time.  Though I thought the price of the festival was a little much, and the planning could have been a little better.  Nonetheless, I met some cool people, and saw some cool juggling, so it was fun.

Saturday was ‘Maximum Overdrive’ which was where the top competitors came out and unleashed some of the most intense moves they could muster, even if it took multiple attempts.  For most of this show, jugglers came out in threes and did their own seperate tricks.  This worked really well in terms of compressing the run time and giving the audience a very extreme visual presentation, so it definitely lived up to its name.  Shortly thereafter, they had the Major League Combat championships.  There were four types of games during the championships: Zombie Combat, Kill the King, Sumo Combat, and 360s Combat.  To my understanding, most (if not all) of these versions of combat are new and were devised specifically for MLC.  They went over very well in execution.  Team Play ended up winning the championship.

The final day of the convention featured the Battle for the WJF Presidency as well as the long program.  As cool as pure single prop based sport juggling competitions are, the long program was a welcomed addition, as it presented more show-oriented routines which added more diversity to the stage.  Pavel Evsukevich won the long program with a routine involving juggling 4 and 5 giant balls, and some intense ring juggling.  Throughout the show, there were a couple of exhibition performances: a two and three ball “Falcontrol” juggling routine by Falco Scheffler, and a video game-themed performance by diaboloist Ofek Shilton, who worked his way all the way up to four diabolos.  Doug Sayers and Josh Horton also performed a very impressive sports-themed team routine that utilized several different props, including tennis balls and a racket.  The Battle for the WJF Presidency was interesting to say the least.  Noah Malone took on Jason Garfield in a rather hilarious competition with various rounds that ranged from juggling jousting to three club dance moves, with the competition climaxing in a finale of speed balloon sculpturing.  It was a very comical and entertaining way to end the convention, with the only disappointment being that Garfield did not actually perform any serious juggling during the performance.  Noah Malone ended up sweeping most of the battle rounds to become the new WJF President for a year.  It is currently unknown what Malone’s duties as WJF President will entail, but I’m sure the WJF will make an announcement regarding this soon.

My flight arrived late on Wednesday, so unfortunately I missed out on a couple of the workshops, but I still made it down to the pavilion before it started to clear out.  The turnout itself was a little sparse, but there were a fairly large number of international jugglers in attendance, which was very cool to see.  There were several vendors there, the main one, of course being the WJF table itself who was selling balls, clubs, rings, t-shirts, and DVDs.  Sportco and Juggling Fashion also had tables briefly set up with items for sale.

For the workshops, Falco Scheffler taught mess patterns and box patterns.  For the mess workshop, he spent time breaking down and teaching Burke’s Barrage, and Rubenstein’s Revenge as well as a couple others.  With the Box workshop, he demonstrated and instructed on the diagonal box, upside down box, the swap box, and a few others that made my brain hurt.  Pavel Evsukevich gave several fairly straightforward workshops on ring balance, kicks, and head bounce.  Jason Garfield himself taught beginning juggling, backcrosses, overheads, and a few other techniques.

The practice space was well utilized with jugglers training, breaking world records (ring and ball passing), and hanging out well into the wee hours of the morning.

 Tune in tomorrow for part 2:  The Competitions.

The attendance this year was easily one of the strongest showings in recent years, most likely at least partially due to an article published in the Detroit News promoting the festival.  On site vendors this year included Gballz, Wunderground, Jolly Lama, and Zeemo the Magnificent.  There were also free copies of Scott Anthony’s ‘Juggling and Comedy for Entertaining Children’ book available to all those who came.

Unlike the past few years, there were a couple workshops this time around.  The two I noticed being held were four ball juggling and seven club passing.  There was no formal juggling show, which may be a festival turnoff for some jugglers, but the festival really shinned when it came to its organized games.  The games tended to lean more towards the novelty side of juggling with events such as quarter juggling, soap juggling, and squirt gun juggling.  Though, they did have a couple technical events such as five ball endurance and a seven club passing competition.  One of the highlights of the day came with the best trick competition, where a variety of creative and technical tricks were presented to a very attentive audience with the winning trick being a five ball three up 720.

On a personal level, I really enjoyed meeting jugglers from all over the Midwest, learning some new four ball and cigar box moves, getting wrecked at combat, and finally buying a copy of the Charlie Dancey’s ‘Encyclopaedia of Ball Juggling’.  Overall, I had an enjoyable time, and it was a solid festival.

March 30- NYC, NY

March 31- Oddfellow Theater, Buckfield, ME, 7:30 pm, Route 117 Buckfield,
ME www.oddfellow.com

April 1- MIT, Boston, MA

April 3- 6122 Greene St. Philadelphia, PA, 8 pm, 6122 Greene Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19144

April 6- 112 W. Market St. Charlottesville, VA, 7 pm

April 9- Pittsburgh, Quaker Valley Middle School, private event

April 11- The Art Institute, Pittsburgh, PA

April 12- Aloft Loft, Chicago, IL, 9 pm, 2041 W Carroll #306, Chicago, IL

April 14- Minneapolis, St. Peters Lutheran Church, private event

April 15- Minneapolis, MN

April 17- St. Paul, MONDO Juggling Festival Public Show, 7 pm
Central High Theater275 Lexington Parkway, St. Paul

April 23- Madison, WI

April 26- Milwaukee, WI, private event

April 27- Findlay/Bowling Green, OH

It’s never too early to plan your vacations for next year. Mark your calendars for the 18th New Zealand Juggling Convention and hang out with circus folk and jugglers from New Zealand and the world over. The event takes place in Levin and a rural theme is planned to match the location – expect lots of open spaces.

If you’re looking to spend some time wandering New Zealand, you might want to catch the International Unicycling Convention that’s also taking place in the country, in Wellington, from 28th December to 7th January. A double bill sounds enticing, no?

Links here:

New Zealand Juggling Convention

Unicon XV

Pictures from the European Juggling Convention 2009 are now online at various sources.  Check out first the ongoing thread at JugglingDB. The picture above is taken from a more extensive collection here.

Given that World Juggling Day is in 10 days, perhaps we could do a StreetJuggling compilation of jugglers around the world. Who’d be interested in contributing a short 20-30 second clip of yourself juggling beside something distinctively local? Drop us a note in the comments!

*edit* Glad to see such enthusiasm! How about recent clips from anytime this year? Get our your juggling toys and make some noise!

I rewatched this and deliberated if this should qualify for a full post since Tony had already mentioned this in his Best Catches compilation. It obviously does if only because I chuckled a little all three times I watched it. If you haven’t already seen their previous stuff, you should. Team RenagadesignLab is less about the juggling and more about the exploration and experimentation. You would see full routines that will entertain the hordes but you’ll discover that little more about juggling that you never thought about.

That, I like.

While on the team, it seems that they will be at the Shoebox Tour America this year. Want to know more? Hit this. Any attendees here?

Here’s Lauge Benjaminsen’s first place run. Gotta love the pink rings – they’re gonna be the next fashion craze among jugglers I tell ya.

In second place is Noah Malone. It’s probably just me but the rock wall backdrop is very distracting especially with the quality that YouTube videos are embedded with.

Here’s Daniel Brown in third. I’m quite certain he scored quite highly on video editing because it looks to be the best put together of the three.