Several major awards were presented at this year's festival. The IJA's second-ever Historical Achievement Award went to Gus Lauppe, a German-born performer who appeared worldwide throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s with his wife, Ursula. Their finish trick had Ursula standing on Gus's head with the right foot and spinning five rings around her arms and legs while Gus supported her and cascaded five rings. Now living in retirement in Maine, both have been loyal IJA members for many years and have attended several recent festivals.

 

The IJA's Excellence in Education Award was received by Kit Summers, a former professional juggler who has recovered from a devastating injury in 1981 by devoting his energy to motivational speaking and teaching others how to put together a professional act. He is now a proud new father living in Pennsylvania, and leads juggling instructional seminars worldwide.

 

Winner of the IJA Founders Award for an act that best reflects the spirit of vaudeville was Japanese juggler Kosen Kagami, the "sensei" (teacher) of Masahiro Mizuno, last year's People's Choice Award winner. Kagami, who lives in Tokyo and has performed traditional Japanese comedy theatre for 45 years, performed his act in the Best of Renegade show and reprised it in the Cascade of Stars show. In traditional Japanese dress, he rolled a ball, metal ring, porcelain cup and wooden box around the rim of an umbrella, did tricks with two hand sticks and a ball, and tossed up to two balls into a "kago mari," an elaborate apparatus fitted with tubes and cups which stood on a tall pole that he balanced on his head. He received a statuette of the award's founder, Art Jennings, posed as The Bum Juggler.

 

The People's Choice Award winner, selected by ballots cast by festival-goers, was Ngaio Bealum, a San Francisco-based comic who got his start as a street juggler. His comedy is not for prudish people, but draws rave reviews at Club Renegade shows, where he has become a favorite emcee. He received a trophy topped with a felt hat which is annually hand-crafted for the IJA by Akron juggler Russ O'Brien.

 

The Cascade Jugglers Woman of the Year Award went to Erin Kasper of the Minnesota Neverthriving Club for her dedicated service to fellow jugglers behind the IJA registration desk and as stage manager for the theatre shows.

 

In addition to its standard midnight presentations, Club Renegade went to sea this year in a flat-bottom ferry boat. It also went "respectable" with a "Best of Renegade" show in Flynn Theatre. Despite mainstream billing, though, neither show strayed far from its spiritual counter-culture roots.

 

The ferry boat cruise to nowhere on Lake Champlain began innocently enough with emcees Head Lice and Dread doing a three-ball routine about mother Earth, father sun and various celestial bodies. Gary Karp did some unique wheelchair hat tricks, then played a mean blues guitar. There were site swap tricks by Boppo, cute Chaplainesque clowning by Iman and an elegant two ball and one ring routine by Jerry Martin. Ray Grins worked cigar boxes and Scott Slesnick showed the manipulative possibilities inherent in tennis balls and their cans. Claude Crumley, at age 81, showed that he can "hold his own" by supporting a bowling ball on his head, and the Airborne Comedians drew applause with some hot club passing to conclude their routine.

 

But some mothers and fathers steered their children toward the snack bar when Team Grafix began demonstrating water pipe tricks, and closed the door tightly behind them when Dread came on to sing a country song dressed in little more than a bathroom plunger!

 

The "Best Of" show, billed as a family show, also stirred up a few parents because of emcee Ngaio Bealum's "mature" comedy material, and a brief artistically topless dance as part of an ensemble presentation. Other presentations were more universally appreciated, including some inflatables comedy by Garbo and Daielma Santos, and steals and takeaways by Darn, Good & Funny. Albert del Castillo positively rocked in a wild-haired and frantic diabolo routine which concluded in appropriate fashion as he broke his hands ticks across his knee and ripped off his shirt.

 

Iman performed with up to seven rings, and Sam Pache, a Sioux Indian from Winnipeg who performed with Circus Smirkus, did a beautiful hoop dance. Bob Nickerson, the first person on the first Renegade stage in 1986, continued where he left off last year with juggling and puns. "Shoehorn" accompanied himself on saxophone with agile and rapid shoe tapping. Eliot Cutler presented his Professor Plunger routine, and Kosen Kagami showed the breadth of manipulative arts worldwide with a presentation of several Japanese forms of the art.

 

While the vast majority of folks in the audience were unaffected by the small amount of questionable material in the shows, IJA officials decided to make sure that parents are adequately warned in the future of the possibility of "mature material" in any and all Renegade shows, no matter what time or place they're presented!