Groundhog Day
Jugglers Festival 2000

Over 135 jugglers attended the 22nd Annual Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival staged by the Atlanta Jugglers Association at Grady High School in Atlanta , Georgia on Feb. 4-6.  The vintage gym was filled all three days with jugglers, spectators and vendors in a lively interchange.

Here's an account of the Y2K festival written by AJA President Charles Shapiro and published in JUGGLE magazine.

Here are some great pictures of the festival taken by Madison Bryan.

The t-shirt design this year (shown above) was drawn by Lisa Chkoreff.  In the photo on the right registration table workers Brenda and Sam wore the tie-dyed shirts which have been a signature item at the Groundhog Festival for the past few years.

   

  

Three juggling vendors -- Infinite Illusions, Serious Juggling, and Andy's Odd Sports -- set up tables full of colorful and intriguing props in the gym.

On Saturday afternoon the jugglers were treated to a fascinating video presentation of cutting edge robotic juggling research.  It was narrated by Chris Atkeson who is a professor at Georgia Tech and has built a multitude of juggling machines that can actually learn much the same way we do.  Click here to see a picture of one of his robots and more about his research.

 

 

 

Saturday Competition 

 

The Seed & Feed Marching Abominable Band opened the show on Saturday with their upbeat music and zany costumes and our own Bruce Plott as band leader.  The tooth fairy appeared with them this year and several children in the audience vowed never to lose any more teeth with this guy around!

 

  

Our own Rodger French emceed the competition on Saturday afternoon.   There were seven juggling acts competing for the coveted Phil award.

1. Matt Henry from Orlando , FL -- with diabolos
2. Nathan Dorrell from Ft. Worth , TX -- juggled clubs, rings and balls
3. T. J. Robertson from Winston Salem, NC -- juggled torches on a unicycle
4. Brian Petit from New Orleans , LA -- with a flaming devil stick
5. Sean McKinney from Brooklyn , NY -- juggled four balls
6. Warren, Pam and Kristen Hamilton from Niceville , FL -- passed clubs
7. Cindy Marvell from NY City -- juggled clubs

The winners were Nathan Darrell (Most Amazing) , Sean McKinney (Most Magnificent), and the Hamilton family (Most Spectacular).  The Phil trophy for Most Magnanimous was presented to our own Rick Purtee for his 16 years of dedicated service to the AJA.  He and his family will be greatly missed when they move to Seattle soon.

The yo-yoists held the Georgia State Championship Yo-yo competition on Saturday afternoon.  The finalists wowed the audience with amazing yo-yo feats.  Greg Cohen presented the three top awards to:  

1st - Masahiro Tanijawa

2nd - David Guttenplan

3rd - Olier

Go to next page (Midnight Cabaret and Sunday Public Show)

Go back to page 1 (General festival info)

Midnight Cabaret

The Midnight Cabaret on Saturday night featured live music from the DeLuxe Vaudeville Orchestra with four of our own AJA members -- Rodger French, Toni Shifalo, Bruce Plott and Andy Ford.  Dan Garrett entertained  with his magic, Jeff Daymont manipulated and stacked cigar boxes, Sean McKinney juggled balls,  Peter Panic provided comedy while juggling five women's water polo balls, two guys showed off their top spinning skills, and Lazer Vaudeville (team of Cindy Marvel, Jeff Daymont and Carter Brown) finished the night with a brilliant and polished club passing act.  The mouse award and three shiny new clubs were presented to Chris Purtee for his many years of service to the AJA.

Public Show on Sunday

The Public Show on Sunday opened with our own Randy Fenster teaching how to juggle three balls.  Then Matt Henry did some great numbers ball juggling with audience participation of ooh's and aah's.  He finished with 1, 2 and even 3 diabolos!  Next there was some really neat two-handed yo-yoing, then our own AJA members Keith, Carl, Charles and Rick (in cool tie-dyed shirts) showed us some intricate club-passing patterns and even threw the legendary Aloysius the Camel into the pattern.  The final act was Warren and Pam Hamilton with fun club passing and take-aways.

 --Article and pictures by Joyce Howard