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JW: Was that because jugglers in former eras came from a circus tradition where there was a discipline and mindset about their art that jugglers don't grow up with these days?

KK: I don't know if it makes a strong act in that way. There's a lot of good jugglers, but the big names who played the good places stayed there. Now you have all kinds of persons going in and coming out. More turnover. There were before just a few jugglers who controlled the good places. There's more turnover now.

JW: What other jugglers have technique that you admire?

KK: Before I answer, I must say that I'm not crazy about juggling. It's a profession to me. I love my work and my profession and I love to perform. That's the main thing. I wouldn't like to juggle just for fun. It's performing that gives me the thrill. Therefore I like to practice certain things because I'm anxious to perform with them. Then the performance is something where everything comes together. The music, the lights, the tricks, the performance and the audience. It's not many shows where you're perfect, where everything comes together, but those shows are a climax you can't describe. That's what I live for.

Therefore I'm not into other jugglers too much. It's not that I don't like them or have respect for them. I have respect for everybody who works hard. Now, of course, there are certain jugglers... Like Dick Franco, I love his act. But it's the older jugglers I really know better. Rudy Cardenas did very good with the ball pockets, and he did the sticks very well. Francis Brunn is a star because it's not just the juggling, there he dances and sets up the beginning so well.

What many jugglers do nowadays is they juggle whatever comes up. "I can juggle the box," they say, and they pick up the boxes. Then it's something else and they juggle it and put it away and pick up something else. But there is no beginning, no end and no lead through. Everything is for itself. Not many jugglers nowaday work on style and an act that fits together, that builds up to a climax.

There were more in the old days I think. Rudy Horn was one I liked very much. Steve Bohr, I had great respect for him. I met him in Hong Kong 16 or 17 years ago and I was sure he was going to be as good as Francis Brunn. He was also from an old circus family. If you go back, the Valentes were brother and sister who did clubs and ping pong balls. Then there were the Sandros, a father and son. He was the best club juggler I had seen at that time.

When you get an idea you're supposed to work it out. Like apple eating. I did apple eating 25 years ago. I had a plastic bottle I juggled like a club and I had a rolled up napkin and the apple. I'll give the trick away now, because I cored the apple so I didn't have to eat for ten minutes on stage. I drank out of the bottle, there was old Spike Jones music, I munched on the apple for four bites and it was gone. Then I wiped my mouth with the napkin and threw the bottle in the sack and it was a clean finish. Today they don't eat the apple, they take bites out of it and spit all over the stage and it's disgusting. They can't finish it and can't swallow it. They have an idea but they don't go through it.

JW: Like with jugglers who do three clubs and then four and then five. You say the audience doesn't appreciate that progression?

KK: They don't understand it. If you juggle three very well and have good success with the audience, going into four looks slower to the audience. Then five looks even slower. That's not a progression. It's betterto do five, then four, then three real fast and it's a killer.

JW: How does a young performer learn to work on this?

KK: A lot of people say I had it easy because my father was a juggler, but I could go to a doctor who's father was a doctor and accuse him of the same thing. You have to have some basis for learning. It's not that I had it easy. But once you are introduced to a good technique you think about it.

My father didn't come up with the apple routine. I did club dates and sometimes had to do three different acts in one night. I experimented with a lot of different things. One thing was I painted my hoops and balls with day-glow color. I performed it in a youth club one time and my mother was sitting in the seventh row. They turned off the lights and I did the day-glow props and after the show my mother said she liked the act, but what did I do when it was so dark? That's when I knew the day-glow only shined so far! I learned a lot on my own.

JW: How does your act build? It's' obviously something you planned carefully.

KK: The bowler hat is a nice start, it's a gentle start. Usually when you begin people don't look at what you're doing anyway. They look at you to say, "Who is this, how does he look, what does he wear?" So if you come out with a strong trick at the beginning, they don't see it. You have to give them time to get to know you.

Then I do the hat and cigar. Then you have the balls in between, and they're a little speedy, a little change, and then you have top hats again. If you didn't have balls between, people would get tired of hats. It's important to change your props. Then I have the boxes to finish.

JW: You break the cigar boxes into two sections. You do them once, then come out and do pirouettes for a finale.

KK: You're wasting it if you combine the whole routine. The second is called a "carpo," a little extra. It's a combination of the first box thing, then the pirouettes for a finale. The triple pirouette at the end is the point on the "I". If I don't have success before that one second trid, that one second won't make any difference. The triple isn't what makes my act. The pirouettes before, the single pirouette with one, two and three and then the double pirouette with three, they're more important than the last triple. They build up to the final trick.