A Week in Wonderland

 

The show began with an all-star cast of nine people executing a beautiful ball routine choreographed by Jon Held. Holzman cleverly emceed the proceedings with several short bits of his own like his Danny Mulligan golf routine. Several other short bits, such as Steve Mills leaf blower and beach ban balance, provided smooth and entertaining segues between featured performers. They included the wondrous contortions and mime of Michael Menes, the creativity of Airjazz with poles, precision baton work of Jill Westover, Jay Gilligan in a reprise of his Juniors act, champion unicyclist Connie Cotter, Jeff Mason with some athletic three ball, ring and box moves, Rob and Linda Peck with a poetic apple eating takeaway routine, Peter Davison's melancholy dance, Kezia Tenenbaum's club swinging and Jon Held's diabolo.

 

On the final night no one wants to go to bed, and the post-show crowd at Club Renegade in the corner of the gym was huger than usual. Interspersed with another great show were several bits of well-received business. Festival organizers had been hawking $5 raffle tickets all week long, and the winning numbers were pulled. Honorary Life Member Mary Wilkins won a round-trip airline ticket, last year's People's Choice Winner, Elliot Cutler, was a winner again, walking away with a festival events package. Wayne Jones won a small library of IJA videotapes and t-shirts.

 

Other heroes were honored there, as professional Japanese performer Masahiro Mizuno received The People's Choice Award and Michael Menes won the IJA Founders Award. Mizuno's creative work with the kendama and gracious way of cross-cultural communication made that choice over­whelmingly popular, and the greybeards who select the Founders Award winner were faulted by no one for selecting Menes as presenter of the most creative, entertaining act of the festival.

 

People also remembered Markus Markoni, a fixture at past festivals who died during the year. Donations were collected for his burial expenses, and someone left a lingering memorial to him in Fargo by mimicking his trademark, throwing a pair of tied-together sneakers over an electric wire.

 

Other award winners during the week were Bill Giduz, who received the Extraordinary Service Award for his steadfastness as Juggler's World editor, and Jahnathon Whitfield, who received the Education Award for his years of work in teaching others the art of juggling.

 

The mystical nature of lJA festival week comes from within the people who gather each year to celebrate their common pursuit of object manipuation. The stories they bring. from afar to the forum, and the experiences they create while there, build on each other to produce memories of mythic proportions. Festival week is a far more remarkable and memorable thing than anything most people encountered in the previous year at the office.

 

To wit: Rit Rittenhouse rode his bike 42 days from Seattle to get there... Joe Niedzialkowski brought along beautiful statuettes of jugglers doing three and five balls... Joann Swaim celebrated another birthday at the fest, her fourteenth, and was noted as one of few people present who could juggle half their age... The CBS Morning Show unloaded a ton of equipment to broadcast Airjazz, Dan Holzman and Dan Menendez to a nationwide breakfast audience... Mark Faje, who used to raise iguanas, got a public tatooing of three lizards around his ankle... Ben Johnson from Columbus, Ohio, took a $20 bet and strolled around the gym in the buff, raising hardly an eyebrow... Boppo on the Renegade stage performed siteswaps read from a list... and a half-dozen young adventurers pulled into the parking lot in a battered school bus on an eventful journey from the East Coast to Oregon, reminding older jugglers of the wonders of youth.

 

The camaraderie, compassion and cooperation during that week become models, and we scatter for another year wishing all of life could be as wondrous as just us, brought together in the gym by the art of juggling. One anonymous writer put it this way in a submission to the daily festival newsletter, The Fargo Flash: "Business, pleasure, practice, learning, teaching, sharing, assisting, planning, visiting, supporting... and all other things we do, in a nutshell enhanced by carpeting and acoustics, a friendly-peopled host city, uncomplicated traffic patterns. It looks quiet, restful, relaxed - why am I so tired? I love this place!"