Though he performs fulltime, Duncan practices rolling and balance tricks for himself because they are hard and he likes working on them.

 

Those in the IJA Individual Championships audience who saw him kick a balanced club from his foot up to a balance on his chin, and watched balls roll around his body as if magnetized to his skin, were reminded again that the best advice is, "to thine own self be true."

 

The standing ovation he received left little doubt who among the five fine finalists deserved the gold medal, and the judges agreed in short order.

Duncan's act was not the "safe stuff' that he does on cruises and corporate shows, but included some moves he had not done in public except once before a few days earlier. Duncan said, "I do what feels good, and then hope it's artistic. It feels good when my body and physics are working together, when there's only a tiny tolerance for error, but it still works."

 

Because much of it was new, he felt unsure coming onto the stage, but tried to maintain his nerve with a mantra, "true focus knows no peak," that his wife Jaki Reis, and friend, Russell Davis, drilled into him as he put his act together in the months before Burlington. It, or something, worked and the performance was almost flawless.

 

Paying homage to the theme of the festival, his soundtrack began with a cow's moo, leading to almost three minutes of palm rolling with three to five multi-colored silicone balls. Most jugglers use acrylic balls for these moves, because they can touch and slide off of each other without disrupting the pattern. But Duncan has worked for years to learn the same moves with tacky silicone balls which must not touch each other, because, he said, "When I really juggle for why I juggle it's for the feeling of having it all work perfectly."

 

He continued, "I've spent thousands of hours getting to the point where I could put that routine together, and it's totally not worth it from a performance routine. I would sit in the subway going from place to place rolling balls in my hands. That always got some interesting reactions!"

 

Next was a three ball routine basically reprising tricks he has performed for a decade, with a few new tricks such as balancing a ball on the top of his head. He followed that with 40 seconds of club tricks, highlighted by balance moves. In what he described as the most precarious part of the entire routine, he dropped a club balanced on his chin down to a balance on one foot, then kicked it back up to a balance on the chin again. But he didn't stop there. He bounced it back­ward to balance on his nose and fore­head, then dropped it backward to a blind kick with the sole of his foot, pro­pelling it back over his head to begin a three club juggle again.