Philly Review

I spent this past Saturday and Sunday at the Phildelphia juggling festival. Friday night, before I drove five and a half hours in the pouring rain from northern Virginia, I was chaperoning the homecoming dance. It was actually not too bad. I worked the ticket booth and came up with interesting facts about each ticket number as I checked it off: ("531, 411, 753 are all valid siteswaps", 419 is my room number, 101 is prime!, etc.) My coworkers all knew about my trip to Philly, and they let me leave the dance at a quarter to 11, instead of having me stay until midnight! That meant I got to go home and go to sleep a little earlier than I anticipated, meaning more rest and therefore energy for the upcoming day of juggling!

Even though I woke up at 6:30 on Saturday morning, but it took me some time to actually get out of bed and into my car. It was 8:00 AM by the time I was officially on the road. It was a dreary, rainy and cold day. Some sections of northern Virginia and parts of Maryland were so inundated with rain that the average speed on the interstate was 45mph. This stretched a typically 4.5 hour trip into five and a half hours of listening to the rain fall (my car has no working stereo).

I didn't care though, because I was going to a juggling festival -- something which I do not do nearly enough of. The only other large gathering of jugglers I have ever been to was the Buffalo IJA convention in 2004. This fest was to be much smaller, but just as much fun. Almost immediately after leaving the parking garage, I was trying to find my way into the school where the fest was being held. Who else do I run into but Vova and (his girlfriend?). He showed me the way into the gym where I saw (for the first time in at least five years) Rich Shumaker, a contact juggling friend of mine from way back in the day. Soon after that I saw Andrew Gradisher and a few friends who I met at a Jay Gilligan show in Pittsburgh last year.

Walking into the gymnasium and running into juggling friends is a great thing. There is nothing like being surrounded by the sounds of clattering clubs on hardwood floors while catching up with people who you know largely through the internet. It's very much like entering another world -- one where it's possible to have a conversation while juggling 5 balls and walking across a tightrope overlooking a room full of people throwing, catching, contorting, stretching, and otherwise manipulating objects in creative and difficult ways. All of this taking place in a room where any other group of people would be content to toss a basketball around, or perhaps lift some weights in the corner. Instead the basketballs are being manipulated three and four at a time, and the weights are pushed out of the way to make room for specially curved tables where someone is rolling seven bright pink silicone balls.

Afer a brief and lonely lunch in the cafeteria, I went back to the gym to juggle. I warmed up with some three ball contact-toss combination material that I haven't worked on in forever, and had a few people ask to film me. I'm guessing that video might end up appearing somewhere on youtube at some point. I'll try to get the links on here if it does.

After the contact-toss juggling, I took my clubs to center gym to practice some three club stuff. I saw Joe Showers and Vova Glachenko trading club tricks and watched from a distance, not wanting to disturb them and also being more than a little intimidated by that much juggling talent in one space. Then the most amazing sequence of events happened. Joe Showers (who has produced some top notch videos with the equally amazing Wes Peden) walked up to *me* and said in a cheerful tone -- "you're Joe DiNoto, I've seen your videos!" The fact that a juggler of this level would actually have seen anything that I've done, much less approve of it, made my day. He had met Michael Karas, an excellent creative juggler and co-star of the juggling videos in question, at IJA Portland this year. So at this point, Vova says "Oh... *You're* Joe... why didn't you say so?" Apparently, Vova remembered who I was from the IJA 2004 fest, and even further back (back to 2003, I think) from when we chatted through e-mail. So we continue on with the juggling, and I'm standing there in awe of the amazing three club moves that are going on. I show Vova a three club combination that I came up with after watching one of his videos, and he seemed impressed by it! I was on such a confidence-boost at this point. Here I was, juggling as *peers*, with two jugglers who are held in international high esteem for creativity and technical ability! Eventually, I needed to get a drink of water because the gymnasium was about 80 degrees, and when I got back, they were on to four club moves, and were immediately out of my league -- I don't even own four clubs.

I proceeded to go back to some contact juggling and catching up with Rich Shumaker. I got a few calls from my contact in State College who was supposed to provide a place for me to stay for the night. Turns out her and her boyfriend would be unable to provide unless I was willing to wait until half past midnight. This was a consession I was unable to make, as I needed to be well rested for the drive back on Sunday. I asked around, and eventually Joe and Andrew offered a place to stay. Jugglers are amazing people -- they are not only great fun to be around, but they are so open and willing to help out another juggler. Andrew and I ended up doing a bunch of five ball stealing tricks (like taking a cascade into a halfshower, back into a cascade, and back-to-back five balls.) I also showed him that I can now do (6x,4)*, a pattern that I had once called "the General Relativity" of juggling -- either you can do it or you can't. I had previously thought that I was incapable of such a complex pattern, but he showed me some methods to learn it in Pittsburgh, and I had since tried those exercises, and learned the move, along with the accompanying four ball siteswaps and their variations in the process!
I couldn't find anyone to eat dinner with, so I ended up doing that alone. Then I got back to the gym after consuming a foot long sub, and Joe invited me to dinner with his group. I had to decline due to fullness. I chilled out for the next few hours until the show, which was pretty cool.

There was some really good tennis-ball-and-can juggling, technical ring juggling/manipulation, as well as Vova's street routine. Vova has a straightforward attitude about juggling, and his performances are as educational as well as entertaining. My favorite part, naturally, was when he dropped doing chops. (Of course, he was "dancing around, which made it harder.") He was forgiven for this transgression when he proceeded to do flawless 5 club 5-up 540's, as well as (6x,4)* with the 6x's as backcrosses.

After the show, I made my final arrangements for the evening, did some club contact juggling, and was on my way.