DICK FRANCIS

A contingent of Boston area jugglers visited with past-president Dick Francis and watched his performance when he was in town with the Globetrotters on December 10, 1977. Performing under an unremembered stage name, Dick did a bongo board act which included ball spinning and juggling before the first half of the Globetrotters' performance; and at half time Dick did a very polished juggling performance, billed then as "Dick Franco".

Beginning the half-time act, Dick runs on doing his three ball routine which includes lots of pirouettes, body bounces, neck catches, floor bounces, and rolls of a ball from side to side of his head over his forehead.

From three balls, Dick moves quickly on to a four ball routine which includes juggling four balls over his head,

juggling three balls with two hands in front of him while with one hand he repeatedly throws a fourth ball up and

down on one side, and another version of this trick where the fourth ball on the side is bounced off the floor instead of thrown into the air. This last version is actually done alternately to one side and then the other which is very pleasing to watch. He finishes his four ball routine doing solids around his shoulders with each hand while turning in a circle.

Next Dick briefly juggles six rings, before switching to five rings which he rep~atedly flips from showing one side with each ring a different color to showing the other side which is striped with black and white. His five ring routine includes several instances in which he puts one on his neck and continues juggling four and then takes the one off his neck and goes back to five; these switches are done very cleanly.

Dick finishes his five ring routine by placing one ring around his neck, then placing another around his neck, flipping one high in the air and while it is coming down placing a third and a fourth around his neck, and then catching the last around his neck as it comes down from high in the air; this is another very nice move.

Moving on to his three club routine, Dick uses lots of flourishes such as his arms swinging in wide circles and quick forward and reverse flips of one or two clubs, all interspersed between and within a large number of quick, exciting three club juggling tricks.

In his four club routine, Dick repeatedly kicks up a fourth club into his juggle while already juggling three clubs, drops a club to the floor and kicks it up again.

In the middle of this routine he does an especially nice move where two clubs are juggled in each hand in circles which go up the outside and down the inside with the clubs oriented parallel to the plane of the juggler; this move looks especially big and wide open. The four club routine finishes with a number of two and two moves, e.g., two-up-on-the-left/two-up-on­the-right, first-and-third-up/second-and­fourth-up.

Dick finishes his act by "spitting" one, two, and three ping pong balls.

Dick's act is very fast, with lots of body motion at all times, and all appropriate styling off at the conclusion of sequences of tricks. In this he is obviously following in the tradition of jugglers such as Truzzi and Picasso. Particularly impressive is how little a mis-throw bothers him; for instance, a club which bounces off his body or is caught by the wrong end is simply tossed back up into the pattern as if nothing had gone wrong. From Dick's point of view, maybe nothing has! From his fellow jugglers' point of view, he is an extremely enjoyable and rapidly developing talent.

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