From Cindy Marvell

Most Incredible 1988

Most Amazing 1989

Dear Pat,
 
You have official permission to use images, text and info from the site www.lazervaudeville.com I also have a son, Theo Marvell-Brown, born in 2006. He is learning to juggle and has already attended many festivals! I hope to bring him to Groundhog someday.
 
Wow, I just checked the Groundhog historic site! My maiden name is FRIEDBERG spelled as such. My grandmother Gertrude wrote a book under that name after she married, my dad Richard wrote a book but never changed his name, and I have a nom-de-juggle of Marvell. But it was cool to see a version of Friedberg on the site in case anyone ever looks it up in this age of internet connections! Who knows, maybe they would find my grandfather Charles' book too.

How wonderful and ironic if the Phil award saves our new family from obscurity.
 
Cindy Marvell

CINDY MARVELL: THE FIRST WOMAN EVER TO WIN THE INTERNATIONAL JUGGLING ASSOCIATION’S CHAMPIONSHIP COMBINES JUGGLING AND DANCE IN LAZER VAUDEVILLE.

Cindy’s Biography from the Lazer Vaudeville website:

CINDY MARVELL

Cindy Marvell began making her mark on New York ceilings at age twelve. As a teenager, she trained at the Antic Arts Academy at SUNY Purchase, practicing her way to her professional debut at the Carnegie Hall Serenades Festival. After graduating from Oberlin College with honors in 1988, she became the first woman ever to win the International Juggling Association's Championship.  Her work has taken her to Europe, Japan , Hong Kong, and ex-Soviet Georgia . In the early 90’s, she toured nationally with San Francisco 's Pickle Family Circus. She studied dance at the Limon Institute and the Isadora Duncan Foundation. New York credits include Bouncing Back with Wendy Osserman at Dance Theater Workshop, Ladyfingers at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and the American Museum of Natural History, Young People's Concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, The New Victory Theater with Cirque Eloize, P.B.S. specials for Sesame Street and director Elizabeth Swados, and the N.Y. Renaissance Festival. Off stage, Cindy has written articles about her field for The New York Times, Juggle Magazine, and Spectacle, and has produced a DVD, A Juggling Journey. Now in her 11th year with Lazer Vaudeville, Cindy is torn between Sleepytime tea and Java Jolt.

NICHOLAS FLAIR, CINDY MARVELL, AND CARTER BROWN OF LAZER VAUDEVILLE DEFY THE LAWS OF PROBABILITY BY PASSING ELEVEN JUGGLING CLUBS IN THIS HIGH-TECH VARIETY SHOW.

 Photos from Cindy

                                    Lady Marvell Is our Champ

by Bill Giduz

When Cindy Marvell won the IJA Individual Championship in Baltimore , she became the first woman to win the IJA's top honor. Her carefully crafted routine matched highly technical juggling with artistic dance choreographed to George Gershwin tunes.

 She has been a fixture at IJA conventions and mini-conventions for several years, gaining respect through her tremendous skill and attracting friends through her infectious smile and warm manner. Juggler's World editor Bill Giduz talked to her after the convention about how a shy woman from New York City came to be an IJA winner.

 JW: Congratulations on your championship! It must have taken some courage to become the first woman on that particular IJA stage. How long had you been thinking about competing?

 CM: From my first IJA convention in Purchase in 1983, I knew I would compete some day. I was considering it last year, but it was my senior year of college and I was writing a thesis. This year, though, I've been juggling full time. I finally came up with the idea of doing a routine to Gershwin's Piano Waltzes and Rhapsody in Blue. But I didn't decide definitely about the competition until the Groundhog Day festival, when I did part of the routine for the show there and it went well.

 JW: Your routine matched the music beautifully. How did you go about putting the whole thing together?

 CM: I was in Japan performing for seven weeks, March 15 - May 10, and that trip had a big effect on the choreography. I worked there on interpreting the music, which inspired a sort of Gene Kelly dance style. Then there was an abstract side of the routine inspired by the things I saw in Japan . At the end of the routine when I go into my "pretzel shape," kneeling with one leg over the other, that's a very Asian sustained picturesque movement.

 The piano at the end evokes quick, extravagant, exaggerated moves. So I finished with some ribbon twirling, with the ribbon decorated as piano keys. I didn't want to end with five clubs, that's too generic, I wanted to move it around again.

 JW: What did putting this routine together teach you about juggling?

 CM: The routine I brought back from Japan had a lot more tricks in it. You know, it's not the tricks you do that make the routine good, it's is the tricks you decide to leave out! That's what makes your routine different from the practice session, where you do everything. It's difficult to put together a competition routine because you minimize those tricks. I cut out half the tricks in my four club routine before I finished it. That let me build up to certain tricks and make a bigger impact with them. And I didn't drop in the whole 2: 10 of the four clubs!

 

 JW: That four club routine was certainly one of the best ever done on an IJA stage, tell us a little about it.

 CM: There were certain passages in it, like the four clubs to slow music, that were incredibly exposed. People don't do clubs to slow music because they're naturally clunky, not like crystal balls. I couldn't risk a drop there because the whole effect was an atmosphere that I had to maintain.

The riskiest trick was during this dramatic music when I pirouette right into splits. The two you throw up have to be just right or it's hard to go into splits. I also did splits in a circle, crossing my hands under. I did propellers with the clubs facing out, two in each hand. Then some triple over singles with various tricks, including be­hind the back throws.

JW: And how about describing some of the rest of the routine for those who didn't make it to Baltimore .

CM: The first thing was four rings, inspired by Japanese decoration actually. It was a pose where I started on the floor showing two rings, then I twirl them open to show that I have four. I learned that just for the routine, while I was practicing in Japan . I really didn't want to do rings at all, but the music had rings written all over it.

I did some simple things with four rings, put them on my music stand and picked up five balls from an attaché case. I started down in the "pretzel position," and rose up as music drew me. I did some multiplex variations, then a full pirouette with three high, timed perfectly to three hard, sudden notes in the music. Then there was the five ball trick I haven't seen anyone else do, where you do a three ball flash and throw two over top so they cross simultaneously. I finished with a neck catch and pose to a pause in the music.

It looks like it's over, but it starts up again. I did the second half of the five ball routine to one of Gershwin's waltzes. I did overthrows with the same ball going back and forth, a half shower, a half pirouette onto one knee, then juggling five balls in a split. I got up out of the split and walked over to the music stand. There was a little move there at end that made people laugh. It's hard in a musical routine to find some thing to make people laugh, but Gershwin music is good for that -- capricious and unpredictable. It gives you moments you can take advantage of with surprise moves and poses.

Then there were the three clubs. One of my favorite parts is walking while doing giant arm circles with the clubs. Then I did arm circles doing Charleston steps. That's like rubbing your tummy and patting your head! It's a good thing I didn't mess up there, because it's impossible to find your place again! Out of that I did two and one with flourishes, two and one into a chin balance, then that thing where all three clubs are balanced on your face for an instant. Then a cross under, shower in a circle, and solid puts on my chin with the left hand tossing behind the back. A bunch of back crosses, triple spin pirouette, chops with flourishes, Mills Mess and Mills Mess with flourishes, cross-handed juggling and a reverse cascade.

Then into the four club stuff, starting with a kickup. After that it was five clubs, but I cut a lot of things I planned to do with five because I thought the most important thing to do was to finish it cleanly. Then I picked up the streamer and danced and twirled it. In the end, the streamer falls around me as I sink into a bow and the lights  go out. 

Cindy Marvell (photo by Ginny Rose)

JW: How'd you feel when it was over?

CM: I felt relieved! I was happiest at the end of the four club routine because it didn't go that well in the technical run­through. I had stopped thinking about whether I would win or not a long time ago. For me winning would have just been doing a good routine. I wasn't nervous because of the competition, I was nervous because I didn't want to make a fool of myself and then see it on the video! I was so happy that the routine went well that winning was just icing on the cake. I didn't watch any of the other acts so I had no idea where I stood competitively. It sounded from the audience reaction like everyone was doing well.

JW: And what's your reaction to being the first woman to win the Individual Championships?

CM: It was nice to be the first woman to win it. I always wanted to be the first woman to do something, that was a little secret of mine when I was young. I wanted to be the first woman astronaut then, and even wanted to be the first woman baseball player. I was really into baseball, and used to play on the boys team. I had to fight to play there even though I was good at it. There was a lot of resistance.

That's one thing I liked about juggling. Juggling was a solitary thing. Growing up I was often off doing things by myself, like reading. Juggling was a solitary, imaginative exercise. A lot of kids take it up to get attention, but for me it was something I could do alone and enjoy. At summer camp one year when I was about 13 I started getting into it. That's the summer I leamed five balls. I practiced a lot that summer because I didn't have that many friends. Juggling was something I could go off and do by myself.

JW: That doesn't sound like someone who would get up in front of 1,500 people and five judges at a championships event!

CM: For me it was a big transition to start performing. But I've learned a lot at it. It's helped me a lot because I've always been introverted and this is an outlet. It's a chance to use some of that energy.

I'm different when I perform. The audience makes it different. You're on the spot, forced to make decisions, it's a matter of life or death, a very risky thing. You never know how it's going to turn out.

JW: How did you first learn juggling?

CM: Music was the big thing at our house in New York City when I grew up. I played cello. But my father used to juggle three balls around the house and that got me interested at an early age. I loved to watch it and finally figured out three balls when I was about 13. But juggling wasn't something you practiced like music. I thought of it as a pasttime.

It was just another form of tossing things around, which I had always liked to do. Catching was always my favorite thing, but I loved to play basketball, baseball and dodgeball. I know juggling isn't just a sport but it has a lot of sports skills, and one of the reasons girls aren't attracted to it is that girls don't play those things. I was the only girl I knew who played those games, so it's not surprising to me that there aren't more women jugglers.

That summer at camp there was a counselor who knew lot of tricks I hadn't thought of. We juggled together and figured out passing. When I came back from that summer I was walking around every­where with these lacrosse balls. After that I always juggled in the school cabaret and was known as the juggler of Fieldston High in the Bronx .

Then I really enjoyed my Sunday afternoons with the Falling Debris Juggling Club in Central Park when I was about 14 to 16. I named it that, Falling Debris Juggling Club. My father used to come along with me, and actually got inspired by me to learn clubs and four balls. My aunt and sister, Elinor, also came. Elinor was at the Baltimore convention. She and her friend Linda did Club Renegade where they passed clubs and sang.

Once I decided in high school I wanted to be a professional juggler, I'd get depressed because I didn't see how it would work. I pursued it, though. I did some performances, like for the Carnegie Hall Serenade Festival my senior year, and I performed for Project Sunshine, a volunteer group at hospitals and nursing homes. Then I went to the Antic Arts program with Berkey, Garbo and Moschen at SUNY­Purchase when I was 15 or 16. It was right before the Purchase convention, and turned out to be a great thing. That workshop changed me a lot, there was a lot of very creative stretching, creating things more for the sake of creating them than finishing them. Before I went to Antic Arts, mine were more one-dimensional routines, but they gave us a healthy guilt about just juggling.

JW: Sort of an anti-tech, pro-arts attitude, huh? You seem to have found the best of both worlds in your routine now.

CM: I've rejected some of the anti-tech thought recently, but I felt guilty about doing just technical juggling for a long time after that summer. They kept getting us to think of juggling as art to be used for other goals. But technical juggling isn't mindless. You can create through your technique to go beyond technique. At conventions you see a lot of mindless juggling going on, and I can understand the reaction against that, but isn't right to just throw technique out the window. You use technique to get somewhere. Like going deeper within and coming out the other side.

Even when I do comedy it revolves around the technique itself. My comedy is juggling with a patter, a lot of visual puns. I did a routine that imitated different rides at a theme park, like the scrambler and bumper cars. I have a four club routine that imitates famous places of the world like Niagara Falls , Grand Canyon and the Eiffel Tower . I also do torches and diabolo in street show, a unicycle, devil stick occasionally, and I love walking on stilts!

I used to think it was creative to use different objects, but my ideas have changed lot in past year or two. On one hand you can say it's unoriginal to do balls, clubs and rings because that's what people have always done. But there is something essential about those props, that's why they've held up over the years. I used to think juggling different objects was a sign of originality, but now I think it isn't unless you manipulate them differently. The originality is more the manipulation than in finding a tennis shoe or Webster dictionary to juggle. The important thing in juggling is not the objects but the path that they're marking.

JW: You sound pretty versatile -- comedy street shows, the musical routine for the championships, and when we saw you in Atlanta at Groundhog's Day, you were juggling to classical poetry! How did you arrive at the poetry routines?

CM: My poetry routines mostly came from Oberlin. The first one was the opening chorus to Henry V. I performed it with three clubs at the Las Vegas convention in the Public Show. At Oberlin I made up two or three more routines, then senior year I got some ideas for other poems. It occurred to me that all these poems had certain things in common with each other and the way I was thinking about juggling. My winter term project was "Magic In the Web," an hour­long show with just poetry routines. I don't have an hour's worth of anything else!

Most of the poems were from the Romantic period, poems by Shelly, Keats and Wallace Stevens. They have a definite form and rhyme scheme that makes them fit well with juggling's regular beat. Part of what I'm doing is to get the rhythm as well as the meaning across. Some of the tricks are meant to go with the rhythm and others are images of the words.

The poems are all about things elusive, things that fade away, like time and beauty. And that's like juggling because the pattern fades. Your juggling doesn't exist unless you're doing it. It's so fragile. Juggling is gone the instant you stop. That's one of the things that helps make juggling artistic, it forces you to be spontaneous, to come up with new ideas. It forces you to think about what you're doing because it doesn't last. It's completely dependent on you.

Juggling or dance has to be constantly created, it never becomes distant from you. It can't exist without you.

JW: The big question for champions is always, "Now that you've won the big one, what are you going to do now?"

CM: Ultimately I would like to do an Oberlin-type show with poetry, but it would be a big theatrical undertaking. I'm also enjoying doing my comedy show. I'd like to work with a small circus at some point, and work in Europe some. I'm taking my IJA prize money to go to Maastricht .

JW: Do you ever worry about whether you can make it as a professional juggler?

CM: I worry about my professional direction all the time. It caused me a lot of anxiety in college. Most people are anxious because they don't know what they want to do. I knew what I wanted to do, but was more anxious because everyone told me I couldn't do that for a living! I've gotten good enough at the street/comedy show to do it, but it isn't my strongest thing. The music and poetry are my strength, but there's almost nowhere to do them.

I guess it's frustrating to not be able to do what I do best, but it's common. A lot of artistes feel that way. For artistes, pushing your own limits doesn't fit into established categories.

But I haven't been doing it full-time very long. After all, I just graduated from college last year. So you never know what may happen!

Cindy Marvell, photo by Cindy Heywood

 

-- Above article published in Jugglers World Fall 1989