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Bablu Mallick finished the evening by creating masterfully animals and political profile through supple hand and finger manipulation against a lit screen. Accurate and inventive, he showed how the profile grew from nothing and then vanished.

It was an excellent, if costly, evening's entertainment. Tickets were 35 DM, and drinks were equal to New York City prices.

In mid-April, Francis Brunn and Nathalie Enterline appeared at the Tigerpalast.

Linguist Andrew Allen Speaks Juggling With His Nimble Hands

by Dick Cuyler

American by birth, Andrew Allen now makes his home in West Berlin, where he is a close associate of juggling archivist Karl-Heinz Ziethen. He began his juggling career at age 12 in Arizona, which he said was "not the greatest place to make a living as a juggler."

Parentless, he was taken in by a Vietnam War veteran and ended up in a small town in Georgia, where his new "father" was regarded as a war hero.

After finding that juggling in a town of 500 wasn't getting him anywhere, Allen went to California at the age of 16. He found the streets there much more lucrative, and won the IJA's Junior Championship at the Santa Barbara in 1984. He saved enough money to make his way to Amsterdam at age 17, and eventually he ended up in West Berlin, working the streets, festivals and circuses.

Andrew has other pursuits as interesting as his juggling. He helped Ziethen write "Juggling, The Art and Its Artists," and he also writes poetry and short stories. He is currently writing a novel about a man who gives one performance every seven years and then disappears from sight. Fluent in German, French, Russian, Chinese and a few other languages, Allen is a linguist with more than passing interest in old and middle English, medieval texts and memorizing techniques. His juggling friends don't know about his writing, and his literary friends are hardly aware of his juggling.

Following his recent engagement at the Tigerpalast, Allen went to Moscow with the Gennan alternative circus UFA in late May. He also has plans to perfonn in Iceland, and will appear at the Stuttgart Killesberg-Variete in September.

These bookings at the tender age of 21 are a good indication that this young man has at least a promising juggling career ahead of him!

(Dick Cuyler, alias Dickens the Clown, is currently touring and street performing in Europe)

Bearing The Truth About Soviet Juggling Bears

by Scot Morris

The recent tour of the United States by the Moscow Circus brought to light the mystery of the Russian juggling bear.

Trained bears are synonymous with the Moscow Circus. The US tour was sponsored by a fabric softener with a teddy bear mascot. A "Time" magazine review of the tour opened with the juggling bears in the lead paragraph.

What, exactly, have those Soviets taught bears to do? Ask them what the bear does with balls in the circus and they say, "It juggles." Can a bear really "juggle?" In the way we use the word? Without seeing their bear, I would have said it was impossible. No way! I can tell you a bear can't do a three ball cascade: Period.

But what are we to make of the carved wood "juggling bear," a traditional children's toy in the U.S.S.R. They always come with moveable arms and a string of balls between the outstretched claws. One bear is even depicted with seven balls between its forepaws. I'm suuuure!

What, then, are these toys modeling? The Soviets have something in their culture they call a juggling bear. It's a real trained bear that does something with balls at the circus. They call it "juggling."

However, I'm happy to report that man is still the only species that cascades juggling balls. On the Moscow Circus tour the truth was revealed. The bear stood on its hind legs. A trainer tossed it a beach ball and the bear caught it between his forepaws and held it. If the trainer threw it a second ball, the bear would open its paws to catch it, thereby dropping the first ball. The trainer caught it and threw it to the bear again, launching a twoball, two-paw cycle. Hardly juggling, thank goodness, despite whatever impression millions of Soviet children may get from their first visit to a toy store!

(Scot Morris is "Games" editor of Omni magazine and lives in Del Mar, Ca.)