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The students gathered - the assessors were choosing. Some they selected for their fine appearance, others for their excellent marks; still others for stubbornness and character. Some were chosen through a temperament, suitable to the theme of a planned routine. But it also happened that after two years of excellent marks and many fine impressions, some turned out to be dull and mediocre.

The assessors - do they have the right to be fair, good or bad? No! An assessor could either be or not be at all. One might compare him with a surgeon at an operating table. The responsibility is no less. We're not afraid of mistakes, although it simply hurts when an assessor hurts someone with excellent abilities. For that reason I always admired those who worked with Yuri Gavrilovich Mandich, Sergei Andreievich Kashtenyan and Viktor Lvovich Pliner. These instructors could find the most important characteristics inherent in every student. They were able, day by day, almost imperceptibly, to develop those abilities. They were able to find the necessary expressive essence, so that in developing it, it transformed itself into the strength and form of the new individual performer, and afterwards, perhaps, into the sphere of the genre itself.

Not rushing time was a guarantee of their success. They never had a completely fixed system of instruction. They created one in the process of working with their students. And terrible were those instructors who "shoved" their wards through a previously prepared educational scheme. The viewing public huddles and fidgets when seeing such performers precisely because this proper training has been so untactfully bypassed.

The entire second year, while I rehearsed with the juggling group, I was watched over by the recently arrived (to the school) instructor, Violetta Nikolaevna Kiss.

In the past Violetta Kiss and her brother, Alexander, had created, as a part of a unique act, a joint presentation of juggling and equilibristics. In Violetta Kiss, in my view, were united all the indispensable qualities of a teacher/instructor. After two short years of work she was able to give me an exceptionally firm foundation in juggling, which for almost 20 subsequent years have been the fundamentals of my creative work.

The skill of a teacher or a instructor is impossible to teach. You have to form it from within. It is apparent that in the mind of a person there exist millions of combinations and connections which come together to form all instructor. Part of this is a feeling of the correct time, life experiences, intellect, education and a unique world view and much, much more. I've never seen books which could tell one how to become an instructor. Usually authors analyze the process by which they became teachers or instructors, sparingly giving prognoses for the future.

An instructor is the living past and lives the future. Without tricks and variations there is no such thing as a juggler, but for Violetta Nikolaevna Kiss the most important thing was the person. We

first of all leamed from her the importance of honesty; everywhere, always and towards all. I rehearsed with her for some three hours a day and without her for five or six. Nothing was left out. In front of us were two frontiers-a minimum of time (two years) and a maximum of work. I passed through the school of Violetta Kiss.

A juggler must have endurance, and I rehearsed some eight or nine hours a day. It's necessary to learn

how to juggle a large number of objects, so we went from the simple to the complex. It's also necessary to have musicality, and we sometimes looked for rhythm in the throwing of the objects. It's necessary to discover unique tricks and variations, so I tried throwing rings in another plane. All of our work was meant to come together in the presentation. We thought about the selection of the objects to be juggled, the alternation of tricks and the composition. Every number in a circus performance should have a clear, powerful finale. Alexander Nikolaevich Kiss himself did the requisite finished by juggling nine rings.

We worked on everything. However, I still had no costume when there appeared on the scene a remarkable person - Riza Yusifovna Beisenberg. Formerly she worked in theatrical operetta before beginning work for Gossoyuztsirk (the State Circus Agency). During that year, she clothed me. Later when I came to her, hopelessly ill in the hospital, she wrote me instructions and sketches for an as - yet unsewn costume. These notes I keep to this day as a momento to the memory of this humanitarian woman.

My costume was the last detail. And when everything came together, there suddenly appeared the most important thing - belief in my success. And it came.

The audience applauded, threw flowers, smiled. And only two people, my mother Anna Ivanovna Ignatova, sitting in the second row, and Violetta Nikolaevna Kiss, quietly thought: "Everything is done." But after this "end" there appeared an endless beginning of even more work, success and enchantment. That's why during that school performance, the public, pelting us with flowers, smiled with a slight sadness, like someone smiles at a ship heading to sea where there await squalls, storms, and, possibly, shipwreck as well.