Great Juggling, part 2: Jay and friends
After the previous mellow entry, I thought it might be nice to include something a little bit more high-energy. Now, the first few times I saw Jay Gilligan perform, back in the late nineties when I moved to the Midwest for college and started attending juggling festivals out there, his work was often very slow, very experimental. He could spend ten minutes manipulating a pair of juggling rings through a series of awkward body poses without making a single toss. His juggling in those shows was very unique, and I appreciated the creativity, but it was not exciting for me. (As a small aside, I do not think the upcoming contrast represents a change in Jay’s performance style; I probably had just missed his higher energy performances until this time.)
Then came Kuka:
A collaboration between Jay Gilligan and Manu Laude, Kuka’s subtitle is Pop Juggling, calling to mind, for me at least, pop music. Kuka is exuberant and energetic. There is no talking, no attempt at straightforward jokes with the audience or clowning buffoonery, but I smiled through the whole show. These two captured a feeling of spontaneous joy in playing around with each other and with the juggling props. As the review in Juggle magazine, (which I have since lost, and am therefore forced to paraphrase instead of quote,) said, the Kuka show walks a line between choreography so jazzy and fun it looks like improvisation, and improvisation between people so in tune with each other, it looks choreographed. At the time that I saw this show, I had relatively recently stopped juggling with my main juggling partner of five years. After the performance, I found myself actually feeling lonely, and wishing I had someone with whom to enter into that juggling space, where you’re so in step with your partner that juggling patterns just click together, and you’re both breaking ground into exciting new tricks and patterns, and laughing together the whole way. These were feelings I had encountered assorted times, sometimes at conventions with certain jugglers, learning new crazy passing patterns, sometimes with a particular partner when everything came together. I was sad, but I was also thankful that Kuka had taken me there again, at least for a while.
I’d like to add a bonus video that I came across recently, while looking for clips for this series of posts. This is another trailer, this time for a video that Wes Peden put together with Jay Gilligan, focusing entirely on three ball body throws (behind the back, for instance, being a common example.) This showcases some of the technical chops and creativity these guys have.
Tune in next time as we slow it down again….
