The stage is set with all sorts of objects to be juggled or facilitate juggling: two Newton’s Cradles (the row of metallic balls that hits one another in perpetuity), balls, pins, colored rings, a spotlight, rods, a vacuum cleaner…Laid out on the floor or placed atop metal tables, these look like a modern art installation. Jay Gilligan has been Juggling for 35 years, since he was eight. He’s had lots of time to think about what the art involves and how it can be reinvented. Juggling, he tells us, is judged by skill, difficulty, and risk.
This is not your usual throw and catch presentation. Woven through a show of increasingly imaginative demonstration are facts about history. Juggling rings, for example, were first standardized in 1976 Taiwan when a practitioner wanted plastic rings and didn’t speak the language. A cookie jar was traced to confirm the 12” circumference. (These come in many sizes now.) He starts with balls, then pins and rings – one in his teeth through which balls tumble, fall only to resume flight.
“Now that humanity has thrown something into space, we’re waiting to see whether we get something back.” We intermittently hear an Apollo 12 astronaut speak as stars flicker on the back wall. Think about what’s involved in juggling. 1. The Object-Can you juggle anything? The current world record is 14 balls. Remember jugglers, The Brothers Karamazov who tossed anything from a knife to a melon and football together? 2. Your body…which comes in contact with the object. 3. Rhythm-How an object and the body meet at the same time.
Standing between the two Newton’s Cradles, the performer sets both in motion by way of the balls closest to him. Nudging each outer ball as it swings back, he also juggles white balls over both contraptions. “Let’s say I can juggle three balls and I do it. I win, so you can say four. Sure, why not? It’s a Synchronis. “Do five!” someone calls out. “Thanks for paying attention,” Gilligan says grousing. He tosses six. “If you really want to see five, don’t look at one…”
Many of the objects we see in the air today are expected. An artist makes his own objects. There are pins with an indented end that can catch balls in flight even as they themselves whirl and spin. The visual is very different. Karl-Heinz Ziethen’s 1981 book 4,000 Years of Juggling (there’s a follow up volume for those interested), states that hieroglyphics show juggling in ancient Egypt.
Gilligan balances a glass of water on three pencils which stand tri-legged on his forehead. He twirls three. three-foot metal rods loosely attached at the end over, under, and crossing, sometimes around his head as he revolves. There’s a “T,” a “Y,” three legs, a propeller. Every time he walks by a table stage right, an antenna picks up his presence and we hear a sound like sliding down a guitar string.
Jugglers in the Middle Ages i.e. jesters, we’re told, only presented “the cascade,” a three ball toss. After that they walked on their hands, played an instrument or did some sleight of hand. “What we think of today as juggling didn’t have its own definition back then.” An 1895 newspaper interview with a juggler begins, “The first thing you have to know is that juggling is not magic. I SHOW you everything.” Gilligan suggests this is when juggling acquired its own identity.
Every segment is accompanied by distinctive rhythmic music whose start and stop is controlled onstage. Three balls thump on a table top. A drum track is added, then another. The balls roll and are tossed. Percussion. Two balls with rattles in them change the sound. Gilligan talks about scientist Carl Sagan and the gold record sent into space on Voyager. (It’s a love story!)
Steamers attached to balls are sucked up by a vacuum, yet the resistant spheres can be juggled. Flying balls explode raining glitter as they rise, loop, dart, duck, and descend. Gilligan is showered with it. Balls of colored yarn slowly unravel as they rise and fall creating a loose net around him. The stage is a mess. Finished with something he tosses it away. Speed between effects increases. Gilligan darts from one display to another.“ Juggling can only exist in your direct experience.”
The finale is like watching fireworks slowly plummet, layer upon layer of them – completely original and enchanting.
Jay Gilligan is the former head teacher of jugging at the Das och Cirkushogskolan in Stockholm and has guested at every major circus school in the world. He’s been awarded most gold medals in the history of The International Jugglers’ Association. Gilligan is eminently approachable after the show.
Photos by Aidan Gibney
Hideaway Circus and the Baruch Performing Arts Center present
REFLEX – Unraveling 4000 Years of Juggling
Performed by Jay Gilligan
Directed by Lyndsay Aviner and Frodo Santini
Written by Jay Gilligan and Frodo Santini
Juggling Prop Design – Drew Aslesen
Original Music – Book Kennison
Through October 22. 2023 Baruch Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Avenue
Entrance on East 25th Street
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