…for Saturday, Oct 12, 2002 only.
My daughter and I had a great time at the Philly Juggling Festival this past Saturday. As always lot’s of great juggling (duh!), wonderful people, and a terrific show.
The unicycling highlights for Saturday, in my opinion, were as follows.
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Anthony and Chuck aka Perpetual Motion performed in the show and did their unicycling/juggling leap-frog trick. Anthony juggles three clubs while idling and Chuck leap-frogs over him and steals the juggle. They nailed it and the crowd went wild. Their whole act is equally exciting with some very innovative steals and walk-arounds. They had some trouble with drops towards the end missing patterns that as Anthony said, “they hit in the basement”, but hey, they had been working all day in the gym and frankly in the excitement of the show nobody cared. A great act.
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A performer named Larry Vee was doing combination tricks in the gym and then in the show. In the gym I saw him idling on a uni while balancing a cue stick on this chin while spinning a basketball on one hand, juggling two in the other, and hula-hooping. Pretty good in the tradition of Brunn and Montego. And Larry, I’m guessing, is well into his late 40s or early 50s. In the show he performed a similar trick, idling while hula-hooping, while spinning a ring around one wrist while juggling a three ball cascade. For the build up he deconstructed the trick indicating exactly how the audience would react and the applause would build with each added element; a nice bit of irony in our post-ironic age.
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Lastly, there was a 10 year old girl learning, with the help of her dad, how to unicycle. She was clearly on the tail end of the learning process, riding around many yards at a time before falling and just learning how to freemount. It was personally enjoyable to watch because I hope to be there soon with my daughter. (A side note to this is that her unicycle was purchased at Toy’s R Us. I had no idea they sold them and obviously the uni was not one for the long-haul.)
Overall it was a very enjoyable day.
I hope Anthony, David C, or anyone else who was there Sunday as well will tell us what happened unicycle-wise then, too.
Cheers,
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ