Groundhog Juggling Festival

FEBRUARY 4-6, 2000

 

By Charles Shapiro

 

A record 134 people attended the 22nd annual Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival in Atlanta. The gym floor was packed with intensive club­passing groups at all levels, a goodly smattering of numbers jugglers, and plenty of people trying out new and exciting tricks and props, including new-fangled tops and yo-yos which lit up.

 

One measure of just how exciting the festival was was the jump in local juggling meeting attendance. Previously, as few as three people have shown up immediately after the festival. This year, about 15 attended both the Tuesday and Thursday meetings. Groundhog Day is a good festival date - toward the end of winter, just when you're starting to flag and the fight for indoor juggling space seems never-ending. One juggler's girlfriend expressed new determination to work on her juggling, since, "Everyone else was having such a great time, and there I was sitting on the benches 'cause I couldn't juggle well enough..:'

 

We lucked into a lagniappe on Friday night, when the custodian did not show up until 11 p.m., allowing the festival an extra hour. Rodger French also drycleaned the AJA banner this year, revealing new layers of archaeological meaning in the hallowed symbol. Louis Zeller's and Toni Shifalo's signatures became visible, as well as the date 1978. Club banners were sparse this year. Perhaps we are drawing more unaffiliated jugglers.

 

Seven intrepid performers competed for the coveted "Phil" trophy. Matt Henry did a sophisticated diabolo act featuring a handstick with two large hooks on the butt, which enabled him to throw and catch diabolos in novel ways. Nathan Dorrell followed with a story featuring three- and five-ball bouncing. T.J. Robinson juggled torches, Brian Pettit worked with a fire devil-stick, and Sean Mckinney did a very pretty routine with four balls, a rare treat. The Hamiltons displayed their clean three-man club-passing routines, and Cindy Marvell finished the competition with her graceful solo three-, four-, and five-club routine.

 

Nathan Dorrell took home the Most Amazing trophy, Sean Mckinney got away with Most Magnificent, and The Hamiltons picked up Most Spectacular. Bill Giduz actually provided four Groundhog trophies this year, so we presented one to Rick Purtee, a stalwart AJA member who is one of the two or three members who has never missed a festival. He is moving to Washington state and will be sorely missed here in Georgia.

 

Keith Watson arranged for Georgia Tech professor Chris Atkeson to come and show his amazing films of robots juggling. These went far beyond Claude Shannon's mechanical sculptures and into the world of serious robotics. Among his videotapes were views of machines actually learning to balance poles on their "hands" with only visual feedback, and machines which could play kendama and toss­juggle three objects. Dr. Atkeson conceded that so far, humans are far superior to machines at both learning and juggling, but his research showed that juggling is a good robotics problem - complex enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be possible.

 

The midnight Cabaret featured the Deluxe Vaudeville Orchestra, Rodger French's tango band. It officially started with magic by Dan Garrett, who showed himself a trouper when one of his tricks pooped out on him. Next up was Jeff Daymont, doing his startling cigar-box manipulations. Sean Mckinney proved he could do more than just four balls with some wonderful five-, six-, and seven-ball juggling, including several interesting multiplex variations and a five-ball multiplex back-cross. We presented the Mouse award to Chris Purtee, for multiple services rendered as he grew up with us. Two of Greg Cohen's people showed us that it's possible to drink a beer and do top manipulations. Peter Panic did water polo balls, featuring a five-polo-ball cascade and a variety of balances and spins. Lazer Vaudeville closed the show with a three-person act, featuring seven­club work and a six-club chase. It ended with a solid ten-club drop-back line.

 

The public show was purposely abbreviated to increase the amount of actual juggling time we could enjoy on Sunday. But about 600 civilians showed up to watch it. Randy Fenster built up to juggling three balls on a unicycle. Next, Matt Henry showed off his five-, six-, and seven-beanbag juggling, then did some marvelous moves with multiple diabolos. A couple of the yo-yoists next showed some smooth tricks. Rick Purtee, Keith Watson, Carl Raffa, and Charles Shapiro of the AJA were next up with their club-passing routine, which finished with a graceful four-man weave. Warren and Pam Hamilton did an experimental piece involving some interesting transitions with three and four clubs.

 

The festival concluded at Thai One On, where a huge table of people feasted until well after dark. Much beer was consumed, and we made plans to celebrate the 50th annual in similar style.