Page 26 Fall 1995
Life
Member Tim Challis (Zoobie the Clown) may have traveled the furthest
to attend the festival, coming from his job as a computer teacher at
the American School in Kuwait. Even more remarkable was the fact that
this was the first festival Challis attended since joining the IJA in
1978! He and his family have traveled the world since 1984 teaching
about computers in international schools in Indonesia, Kenya, Saudi
Arabia and now Kuwait.
Early
in the festival, propmaker Todd Smith was on the phone regularly
trying to calm his wife back in Cleveland, Cathy Boyle. He assured her
that their first child wouldn't be born until it was
Another
birthday celebration was enjoyed by eight-year-old Chad Patz on
Wednesday. What's remarkable was that Chad has celebrated every one of
his birthdays at an IJA festival since the day he was born. (Except
that his seventh birthday happened a month before the 1994 Burlington
Festival, but that was the lJA's fault for moving the fest date into
August.) He and the other six members of the Patz family have attended
all of the last eight festivals. They repeat a mantra in the car on
their festival trips to help Chad remember his heritage: "One in
Denver, two in Baltimore, three in LA, four in St. Louis, five in
Montreal, six in Fargo, seven in Burlington and eight in Las
Vegas..." Chad also made his Renegade stage debut in Las Vegas,
doing three and four balls, three clubs, and a five ball flash on the
first try.
Newly-elected IJA board member Braidy Brown, assisted by roper extraordinaire Mark Allen, conducted another marathon auction to raise funds for preservation of the IJA archives. Bidding on almost 200 items lasted more than three hours and raised $2,237, the second-largest amount ever. The top fundraiser was Anthony Gatto's first clubs, hand-made by his father, Nick ($375).
Other
high
Soren
Munteanu, one of ihe world's few seven club jugglers, stumbled onto
the festival and dropped in briefly. Munteanu is now working cruise
ships out of Los Angeles, and came to Las
A
person well-known to juggling collectors, Ken Cummins, came to Vegas
for his first IJA gathering since 1957. Cummins wrote "Bungling
Juggling," an instructional booklet, in the early 1960s because
there was no other instructional book available at the time, and named
the book after the act that he and his brother, Carter, performed for
four years in the early 1960s. He came to this festival primarily to
take Dave Finnigan's Juggling Institute workshop.
A
true old-timer in the crowd was 84-year-old local resident Willie
Danville, who talked about the month in 1926 when he and Enrico
Rastelli appeared together with Circus Shumann in Copenhagen. Danville
was born into a show business family, the Faludi troupe, and trained
in acrobatics. Rastelli was in his prime that month that the Faludis
and Rastelli appeared in the same show. Danville said the Great One
did about 45 minutes of the three-hour show by himself, assisted by
his wife. "He was a genius, unbelievable!" said Danville. |
Silver medalists in the Teams Dan (above) and Joey Cousin (David Carper photo) |
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![]() Volker Maria Meier with diabolo in the Cascade show (David Carper photo) |
![]() Tyler Linkin does silliness with ping-pong in the Cascade show (Bill Giduz photo) |