The Trail Of His Hoops Traces the History of

Bob Bramson

Across the Stages of the World

by Scott Malone

 

In the evening of July 20 at the IJA festival in Rapid City, S.D., Bob Bramson was to toss his last "hoop-Johnny" on the stage. The hoop will roll slowly away from him and make an apparently meandering circle. Then, as if pulled by magnetic energy, it will slip perfectly into the open door of a screen cylinder. Bramson will cross the stage, close the door, smile and end a performing career that has spanned more than 53 years. The IJA honored those years of service to the art by presenting Bramson with this year's Historical Achievement Award.

 

Bob Bramson was born in August 1933 to German hoop-rollers Paul and Gertrude Bramson. His parents, already second-generation performers, were quite popular in the music-hall scene of the time. Within six weeks of Bob's birth, the three Bramsons were on the road to the Soviet Union, where Paul and "Gerti" spent the next five years performing in the state circus.

 

The Bramson family act was created in 1902, when Bob's father, a former billiard player, began to juggle and roll hoops - the wooden rims of old-fashioned bicycle wheels. In the classical act, the three-quarter­inch thick hoops, ranging from 18 to 24 inches in diameter, are rolled across the stage and over the juggler's body. In his act, Bob also juggles up to seven hoops - a feat of considerable strength considering that each weighs a pound. He also balances two on his head while spinning two on his leg and three on his arms, and rolls them across the stage into the open screen in the finale developed by his parents.

 

His show has changed over the years. Since 1992 he has employed what he describes as a "Blues Brothers-inspired theme." A bearded Bramson wears a dark suit, tap dances, jokes with the audience, and ­ while juggling - pauses to drink and smoke (a habit he affects solely for the show). He explained, "It's not the classic act because we don't have that audience anymore. But I have fun with this."

 

Bramson believes fun is a key in his profession. "Juggling must be fun... out of habit you can make a handstand or hang from a trapeze, but juggling has so much to do with concentration and good nerves that an unhappy juggler is doomed."

 

Paul Bramson, his father, was a native of Bad Pyrmont, Germany, a town near Hanover. Paul developed his hoop-rolling act shortly after the turn of the century, but was not the first performer to use the prop. An American juggler named Everhardt also performed with hoops in the 1880s. Paul Bramson did focus on it, however, with an intensity that made him in demand in music halls across Europe. He performed at the openings of many major houses, including Berlin's Scala in 1926. The elder Bramson was also an early adapter to the electric age, and invented lighted hoops, which he patented in the United States, England and Germany.

 

Gertrude LaRoche joined the Bramson act in 1930, following work with a Hungarian club-juggling troupe called the Five Luxors. She was the daughter of Leon LaRoche, a circus veteran who had performed with Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1895 through 1902. LaRoche developed an act called the "Bolla Mysteriosa," a man-sized sphere that a performer, hidden inside, rolled up and down a spiral track almost 30 feet high. Gerti, who also had an uncle who worked as a juggler, took over her father's bolla myseriosa act in 1924. Three years after joining the Bramson act, Gerti married her partner, Paul.

 

Bob remembers very little of his first years, other than a smattering of Russian he picked up from childhood playmates. But his later childhood memories are vivid. "Before the fifth grade, I attended 53 schools," he said. "Every 15 days or every month, there was a different town."

 

He kept a small book, like a passport, to keep track of his education, and he enjoyed traveling. "It makes you brighter," he said. "As a child I knew all the big towns of the world. It is a very, very interesting life... living with all the animals in a circus and moving from town to town,"

 

On the other hand, he was stifled by remaining in one place. When he stayed with his grandmother in Berlin to attend German schools, she made him study ballet, tap dance, piano and violin. He said, "I was fully booked. It was too much finally. You can't put that much into a child,"

 

He first began to juggle at age six, after watching an eight-year-old girl practicing with clubs. He went home and tried to juggle hoops ­which are the only prop he has ever juggled in performance. In practice he also juggles hats, balls and clubs for his own amusement. The learning curve was very steep at first, but little by little, his ability and intensity began to build. "I thought it was very nice to go the theater or the circus building in the morning to rehearse, but I never did too much, really. Rehearsal was only two hours or so when I was young," he said.