The Ordinary Acrobat

by Duncan Wall

  “Here, let me give you an example,” he said in the dressing room. He stood above me, holding a white silicone ball. He had found a pair of pants, but still no shirt. His body resembled that of a triathlete, thin and muscular, with the thick mottled skin typical of a physically active man in middle age.

  “Take the five-ball pirouette. That’s a standard move. Beginning from a cascade”—the basic juggling pattern—“you throw all five balls in the air, spin, and catch the balls when they come down.” He mimed the action—the tossing, the spinning, the catching. “That’s a codified move. Everyone knows how to do it, even if few people can.”

  But that was only one approach. An alternative, he said, was to create an original move. It could be an original pattern; Mill’s mess, for example, was a mind-boggling three-ball move created for Steve Mills in the seventies. Or it could be an entirely new technique.

  “In my latest show, I balance a ball here,” he said, pointing to the topside of his wrist, where a watch face would usually rest. “I balance a ball there and spin.” At which point, to my surprise, he demonstrated the move. Raising his arm, palm-down, he cocked his hand upward a few degrees, creating a small trough at his wrist. He nestled the ball in the trough and extended his arm to the side. In this position he started to spin, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum, his carriage erect, his feet pivoting precisely on the carpet. As his arm zipped above me, whipping circles in the cramped dressing room, I thought for sure the ball would fly off. But it didn’t budge. Centripetal force combined with the upward tilt of his arm to pin it in place.

  “That’s an original point,” Thomas declared as he eased to a stop. The pace of his breath had increased. His eyes glinted. “The move is just as difficult as a five-ball pirouette. The only difference is that one move is codified and the other isn’t, so one is seen as technical and the other is artistic. But they’re both juggling.”

  This might seem like an obvious distinction today. But at the time of Jérôme’s first experiments, it was revolutionary. Traditional jugglers followed certain codes. The new model meant breaking away from those codes. Jérôme had to carve his own path. Nobody else was thinking that way.

  Well, almost nobody. In 1984, Jérôme received a visit from Karl-Heinz Ziethen, a juggling historian, who showed him a video of an emerging American juggler: Michael Moschen. Like Thomas’s, Moschen’s path was atypical for his era. Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, he learned to juggle as a teenager with his neighbor Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller. After high school, he didn’t opt for college or the traditional circus, but instead migrated to New York. There he made a name for himself juggling in less traditional venues, such as the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and later for a group of circus upstarts recently arrived from Canada, Cirque du Soleil.

  Like Thomas, Moschen worked to expand the definition of juggling. He tried to find novel uses for traditional objects—balls, rings, clubs. In 1984, for a performance called Light, he invented what he referred to as “dynamic manipulation,” a method of rolling crystal balls along his body such that his skin appears magnetic. Then Moschen branched out into atypical objects. In his 1991 performance, In Motion with Michael Moschen, he worked with metal rods. Later, he danced with and manipulated S-shaped pieces of metal.

  On the surface, the work sounds derivative: vaudeville jugglers had long before invented original routines (e.g., Cinquevalli’s baize billiard jacket). But whereas the vaudevillian jugglers sought novel stunts to impress their audience, Moschen thought of his objects as “visual instruments.” What interested him were an object’s aesthetic possibilities: What did it look like? How did it move? What patterns could be created with it? As a critic for The New York Times commented, “He is a movement artist … a sculptor in motion.”

  Jérôme considered Moschen an artistic brother, an alter-ego outre atlantique.

  “I once told Michael that,” Jérôme said in the dressing room, now zipping up a sweatshirt. “We were driving in a cab and I said, ‘Michael, you are the little brother to Francis Brunn, and I am the little brother to you.’ ”

  For fifteen years, the jugglers spread their ideas across their respective continents. In America, Moschen lectured in “innovation and creativity” at MIT and demonstrated his method at the prestigious TED conference in California. In France, Thomas went on to become, well, Jérôme Thomas. Together, the men helped change the definition of juggling. Today “toss juggling” is just one form of the wider discipline, which has become known as “object manipulation” or “dexterity play.” During my time in France, I saw “jugglers” perform with plastic bags, leather boots, glasses, feathers, swords, sofas, sawhorses, tea bags, cups of yogurt, slide rules, plastic bags, origami cranes, and a pair of unruly khakis.

  Today, this spirit of innovation can be found in all the circus arts. Being a modern practitioner means searching for new and different approaches: new moves, new techniques, new equipment. “It’s not l’exploit pour l’exploit,” a member of Les Acrostiches told me. “From our very first show, we wanted to present things in a different manner.”

  But, in my experience, jugglers take ideas more seriously than other performers. Discussing their work, they can sound like explorers heading into the great unknown. The term “discovery” is common. So is scientific jargon. In 1992, Jérôme founded a group called the Workshop for Research in Object Manipulation (Atelier de recherche en manipulation d’objets). Jörg Müller, a German juggler, conducted “Performance Research Experiments,” including one investigating the possibilities of juggling in a zero-gravity plane. At Gilligan’s invitation, I once attended an “Object Manipulation Lab” in Stockholm, a series of workshops he’d organized with funding from the Swedish government, with the aim of conducting “research” into the art of creative manipulation.

  For three days, Gilligan and three other jugglers experimented to elucidate fundamental presumptions of their craft. The process was rigorous and concrete. The jugglers worked individually to see what movements an object could yield, gathering in the center of the room afterward to discuss their observations. Gilligan scribbled notes on a legal pad and filmed the exercises with a digital camera. “If a manipulation isn’t in line with the one that came before it, it’s weak,” concluded Gilligan to the group. Added Luke Wilson, a British juggler, “I try to find the best solution for any given situation. Not just a solution. The best solution.” The other jugglers nodded in agreement.

  The pronouncements sound heady, but they have practical effects. As Henry Moore once wrote, “A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.” Jugglers are interested in the motion of objects. To train as a juggler is to receive a unique education in the material that surrounds you, to be an expert in what Moschen once called, in an interview with The New York Times, “the emotional resonance objects have with people.”

  Carried to the extreme, you might even say that juggling isn’t a type of performance so much as a way of interacting with the world. My own understanding of this came from watching Jörg Müller perform his piece Mobile, in which he manipulated a series of steel pipes hanging from the ceiling by steel cords, thus resembling an enormous wind-chime. Each pipe was as big as Müller himself. Watching him dash between the pipes, knock them with his knuckle, toss them in complex trajectories so that they missed each other by inches, I thought: Who else could do this? Who else could control these objects so precisely? What other kind of training could lead to this art?

  IN THE THEATER, two enormous pieces of white canvas cloaked the stage, one hanging down the rear wall, the other rolling across the floor, both glowing brightly under rows of halogen lights. Jérôme and I paused in the wings to slip out of our shoes and admire the environment, our rehearsal space. It had a quiet, cathedral-like elegance. Light from the stage spilled over the rows of empty seats. Across from us, a woman in paint-splattered overalls eased a roller across the floor, marking strips of glisten
ing white on the black surface. Cupping his hand to his mouth, Jérôme called to her across the canvas expanse.

  “Is it safe to walk on?”

  The woman looked up and smiled warmly. “But of course,” she said, and made a low “be my guest” sweep of her arm. With his black nylon bag of juggling balls knotted around his knuckles, Jérôme tiptoed barefoot onto the canvas, advancing carefully, as if laying the first tracks in freshly fallen snow. “Somebody’s going to be lucky to work in such a beautiful space,” he announced to nobody in particular. “To dance on, it’s paradise. To juggle on, paradise!”

  The woman grinned. “I like my work.”

  A juggler’s work demands that he be both an athlete and an actor, and so training can prove tricky. There is no standard practice routine. Much depends on age. At nineteen, Vladik, a Ukrainian American star, can afford to spend his days mixing hip-hop music on his computer. Older jugglers can’t be so cavalier. Although a juggler can continue to work well into his fifties and sometimes even his sixties—decades longer than acrobats—practice becomes progressively more important as he eases toward what Dick Franco once called “the age bomb.”

  At forty, Jérôme referred to his practice as “hygiene.” In a good month, he averaged twenty-six days of juggling, a respectable total, he felt, given the distractions of being a living legend. Most days, he would pad through his newest routine, reviewing the rhythms, reminding himself of transitions, or polishing a move that had been giving him trouble. Sometimes he studied new techniques. A few years ago, Jérôme decided to learn five clubs. Back in the 1980s, when he was breaking into the scene, five clubs was a rarity and a high benchmark, the four-minute mile of the craft. With the Internet, however, things changed. Kids started posting videos of themselves performing seemingly impossible tricks, which they never could have pulled off in person. Nonetheless, the videos had an effect: worldwide, the skill level went up.

  Jérôme practiced five clubs every day, paying attention to his footwork and body position, drilling his double flips until he was sure enough of the trick (95 percent accuracy) to include it in his show. That was three years ago, but he was obviously still pleased with the achievement. He was, he said, “pretty damn proud” of hanging with the kids.

  “How about we start with a little warm-up?” Jérôme had dumped his balls from his bag, and he started popping four of them above him with a childlike joy, working up an energetic lather as he counted the rhythm of the tosses. “Tac, tac, tac, tac.”

  Nervous, I lingered at the edge of the stage. I dug out three of the balls that I had purchased with Gilligan and lobbed them around, trying to find the flow. The process reminded me of jogging: the first few minutes are rusty, then you feel the grease ooze into the gears. When I felt comfortable, I ran through a series of tricks I had choreographed for the meeting: claw, claw, reverse cascade, tennis, columns, yo-yo. By professional standards, my routine was a remedial display, one Gilligan might have performed long ago at one of his preteen Cub Scout banquets. But I was proud of it, and wanted to get it right, and so, in my corner of the stage, I tried to summon Mose’s sage advice: “Scoop in a relaxed fashion. Keep your hands low.” I also thought about my expression. I had come to believe that all good jugglers developed a “latent face,” a look of practiced nonchalance reserved for particularly difficult moves. Jérôme’s latent face included a narrowing of the eyes and a pursing of the lips. Gilligan’s was staid, his jaw unhinging to breathe. I aimed for something like baffled amusement. I imagined myself saying, “Oh, would ya look at that!” Which is what I was thinking when Jérôme summoned me to action.

  “So why don’t you show me what you’re working on?” he said. We stood in the center of the stage. Jewels of sweat had already appeared on Jérôme’s forehead. He was swigging from a plastic water bottle. I assumed the starting position: two balls in my left hand, one in my right. I could feel my heart knocking against my rib cage. I started to juggle, beginning with my left hand. Things quickly went south: before I could even find a rhythm, one of the tosses came off wrong, and in my distraction I felt another ball glance off the side of my hand, then heard it hit the stage with a shameful thud. “Sorry about that,” I said. I retrieved the ball and started again, careful to avoid Jérôme’s penetrating gaze.

  The balls now settled into their familiar rhythm: toss, toss, toss, toss, toss. With a bracing breath, I launched into my routine: cascade, tennis, cascade, claw, reverse cascade, columns, yo-yo. I don’t remember performing the routine at all. It was a blur of zipping balls and flagging arms—my arms but somehow not my arms—whipping around like tentacles. The panic-stricken voice in my head struggled to keep pace with the action: grab it, yes, claw, go, yes, next. Miraculously, I emerged from the routine with the pattern intact, the balls looping jauntily in front of me. A great bell of pride clanged inside my chest. But not for long: for the first time all day, Jérôme had fallen silent.

  “Bon” was what he finally said, in a notably flat tone. “You have some nice tricks there. Now let’s work on the quality of the gesture.”

  He told me to start juggling again. When I had found the rhythm, he began pacing a circle around me, like a sculptor examining a statue. In the beginning, he explained, what mattered most was the relationship the juggler cultivated with his body. “You have to be aware of yourself all the time,” he said. “You have to be checking yourself constantly.” He stopped and stared at my feet. “For example, without looking down, can you tell me how your feet are positioned?”

  I had no idea. I was too focused on my hands.

  Jérôme made a clicking sound. “Your right foot is pointed out, your left foot straight.” He nudged my left foot into position with his toe. “Try to keep them both slightly pointed out. When you practice, find this position first.”

  We repeated the exercise with other parts of my body. Was my spine straight? My shoulders? My chin? Jérôme adjusted me physically, as if I were a pliable doll.

  “Now try changing something yourself,” he said, after nudging my chin a few centimeters upward with his knuckle. “Try rolling your shoulders forward.” He demonstrated by hunching his shoulders over his clavicle.

  I followed his lead. Still juggling, I drew my shoulders into my chest.

  “Bon. Now pull them back.”

  I complied, squeezing my shoulder blades together. But the new position separated my hands, which altered the rhythm of my tosses. Instead of the usual scoop, the balls whipped in a low, wide pattern. I yanked my shoulders forward, but it was too late, and the balls rained to the ground.

  Jérôme cocked a pedagogical eyebrow. A smile pushed at the corner of his lips. “See that? You learned to juggle in one position, so anything else gives you trouble.” He scooped my balls from the canvas and started juggling them himself. “Remember,” he said, “juggling’s not a static operation. It’s dynamic. You’re not moving the balls. You’re moving with the balls.”

  With the balls still bubbling in front of him, he started contorting his body, twisting at the waist, bending at the knees. “Think of the balls as an extension of your body. Whatever motion you begin the balls continue.”

  I gave it a shot, starting with the vexing shoulder move. Trying my best to imagine the balls as an extension of my body, I retracted my shoulders slowly. Instead of forcing a rhythm, I let the pattern grow wider, using my wrists to toss rather than my arms.

  “Et voilà!” Jérôme chimed. “Now do it again, all of it, forward and back.”

  I did, curling my shoulders forward, drawing them back. At first the motion felt unnatural, like an awkward hip-hop dance. But after a few repetitions, the move became easier, my body more supple.

  “You see that? You’re freeing up your body. Now try moving around freely.”

  I started moving around, twisting with the balls, left, then right, bending at the knees. I even dared an improvisational kick. Jérôme almost exploded.

  “Et voilà!” he said again. “He’s beginn
ing to understand!”

  I grasped the lesson. It was related to Jérôme’s speech in the dressing room. Juggling isn’t just hands and arms; the entire body is involved. By thinking outside the usual position, you could also move beyond the traditional definition of the craft. But there was a subtler lesson, too. For Jérôme, juggling was defined by space, not objects. He regularly coached me to “explore the space.” “If you’re thinking about the objects, you’ve lost half the game. This is about the space.”

  With this in mind, he had developed a training system for himself and other jugglers. He called it jonglage cubique, cubic juggling. In cubic juggling, the space around the juggler is divided into three-dimensional planes, like a Rubik’s cube. The juggler’s body is similarly dissected. To train, a juggler works the parts individually, targeting each with unique exercises. Some of the exercises involve objects, some don’t. The latter, considered part of “zero-ball juggling,” can look like dances, but the system as a whole is closer to tai chi or biomechanics. At first the trainee practices the exercises separately. After three years, he begins to combine them. The idea is to build the juggler’s awareness of the space and his energy, to help him develop a “poetic sense of movement.” “It will be my legacy,” Jérôme told me.

  For the rest of the afternoon I worked with my three balls, exploring different trajectories, patterns, and movement. Jérôme, meanwhile, drifted nimbly across the stage, juggling and dancing on the canvas, cycling through objects—big white balls, little white balls, clubs.

  At one point, feeling inspired, I decided to follow his lead. My balls aloft, I shuffled across the stage awkwardly, not moving anywhere specific, just relaxing into my juggling groove. Jérôme loved it. “Mais oui!” he shouted “Formidable! Impeccable!” He swooped up next to me, juggling and moving, moving and juggling. “Ah, oui! C’est beau! Vas-y! Lache-toi!” Let yourself go!