Lange Family Holds Down Center Ring in American Circuses

By Mariah Skinner

 

Old jugglers never die - they just pass away!" This jocular attitude has characterized Bob Lange's life and career as patriarch of an American circus family.

 

Lange, his wife, Jane, and their four children figure they've traveled more than a million miles in the past 33 years, and that's not counting the miles Bob logged himself during 20 previous years!

 

Ervin Lange, his father, was a gymnastics instructor who started putting together circus acts during World War II from the ranks of his students. Because of a shortage of able-bodied men, he trained "girl acts" and "kid acts." He worked his son, Bob, into an act at the age of 11 months, and Bob has been traveling ever since. "It was cheaper than hiring a babysit­ter," Bob joked.

 

Bob learned acrobatics and teeterboard, and in 1962 married Jane Ninmer, who was also in the act. One of their first engagements as a couple was appearing with Arthur Godfrey at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, where they co­incidentally "adopted" a set of practice rings that the previous performer, Rudy Cardenas, had left behind in a dressing room!

 

Having been raised in the circus, it was natural that he and Jane do the same with their children. The first of four, Vickie, was just a young girl when the Langes found themselves traveling for about 10 weeks on the Smith Fair Circuit in Montana with Lotte Brunn. Taken with the child, Lotte began to buy her small gifts, and soon became friends with the girl's parents as well. Acrobatics was a physically demanding act and Bob and Jane were looking for an easier discipline to present as a second act. Lotte suggested juggling, taught Jane ball spinning, and gave her the props to perform it. 

 

The Langes began occasionally presenting multi-ring juggling displays with Lotte and her son, Michael Chirrick.

 

Rob was born four years after Vickie, Susan a year after that, and David was born in 1974. All performed the teeterboard in the troupe's primary act, and Bob said his children learned juggling "by osmosis." The props were always there, and anyone who was interested in learning was welcome to practice. This included other peoples' kids as well. The Langes played some fairs with the singing Osmonds, and taught the Osmond kids to juggle.

 

The Lange children joined the juggling act gradually, generally performing with their parents once they were 7-8 years old. "Juggling is probably one of the easiest and most difficult of all the show business skills," said Bob. "When you're doing it as a hobby, you're entertaining yourself. But a paying audience wants to see movement and color, and you can't have many drops. We didn't bring the children into the act until they could meet that standard."

 

Vickie came in juggling and walking a rolling globe. Bob was on stilts and Jane was on the ground, and they passed clubs and rings up and down and over the top.

 

Because of their acrobatic background, the Lange juggling act has always included a lot of shoulder stands with their passing, and the children somersaulted all over the ring. Bob said, "Basically we tried to fill the ring. You're selling numbers with an act like ours, so you have to have a lot of stuff in the air constantly."

 

Having extra hands on deck also meant there was no break between routines, because someone could be dispatched to the side of the ring to get different props while the others kept the action going in the middle. The routine always finished with torches.

 

There were no professional prop builders in the early days of the family act, so Bob made his own clubs. He constructed one set that could withstand high winds outdoors out of 16-ounce steel beer cans. "I smoked cigars and drank my way into an act!" he joked. Changing venues from circuses to fairs to school shows, and with the kids constantly growing and needing new outfits, Jane has been constantly sewing for the past 30 years to keep the act properly costumed.

 

In the late 1960s they wore short outfits with yellow and orange checks, and their props and prop case (a 50-gallon oil drum split like a barbecue grill and mounted on wheels!) were all painted to match. Bob covered his clubs with paisley contact paper when they played with Circus Gatti in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district, and got good reviews from the local hippies for their psychadelic appearance!

 

The routine also changed as family members have been added and subtracted. In its current 4-1/2 minute version, two children do single acts with three and four tennis rackets and five balls in the side ring while Bob and Jane perform in the center ring. All four come together in the center ring for multi-club passing, shoulder stands and the torch finale.

 

"The children are a lot better jugglers than we are at this point," admitted Bob. They pass seven and eight clubs between them, and Susie and Robbie both do seven rings and are practicing nine. Their parents have never juggled more than five.

 

This is also the first year the Langes have used juggling as their primary act, while they do a comedy acrobatics routine as their second act and have dropped the acrobatics act altogether. Circumstances have sometimes forced this close-knit family to split up their six-person act into two, even three rings. This has allowed the children to develop their own individual styles and to work on more difficult tricks. Now they go work by themselves on other shows for a while, then get back together with their parents. Three of the children performed in Singapore for two weeks last November, and Rob broke away from the family's work with Hamid-Morton Circus this year for a solo job with Vidbel Circus. Eldest daughter Vickie has married and left the act, but she often performs her foot juggling on the same show with the rest of her family. Youngest son David, at age 21, and his sister Susan still travel with their parents most of the time.

 

It is hard to imagine Bob and Jane Lange taking anything too seriously, until one sees them unpack their golf bags. They look forward to the day when they can pursue this particular passion fulltime. Bob admitted, "We're at the point where we aren't going to learn much new with juggling. Jane and I are now just trying to maintain our act and not ruin our golf game!"

 

With that in mind, they're visiting every course they can as they juggle their way around the country.