49th International Juggler's Festival

Rapid City '96

Festival Report

 

Fast Times and Fast Friends in Rapid City

by Thomas L.

 

South Dakota is a dizzy land of water parks and tourist caves. The Winnebago parade winds past clear lakes and native American handicraft, under the benign gaze of fiberglass dinosaurs. The mountains are carved into heads; heads larger than life, larger, even, than Albert Lucas.

 

The road rolls across rust and gold fields, green hills dotted with haystacks and cattle, into the stark deadness of some very bad lands. Lands drier than Jay Gilligan, and more uncaring; more acrid, and more metallic than even his pants.

 

Suddenly you find yourself high atop a plateau, looking out miles over a valley below; hot, parched, carved with rivulets and caves, the ghost-traces of rain from torrents past run off the baked hard-pan. Flies idly buzz, and swallows dart; they are the only flashes of motion under the slow-rolling grandeur of hundreds of great clouds, sketched across a sky so vast they don't begin to fill it. It is desolate, it is magnificent, and there are no Albert Lucas or Jay Gilligan jokes.

 

Jugglers gathered in Rapid City, a town split by a mountain range topped by a dinosaur. Sandwiched between the spectacular Badlands to the east, and kitsch desecrating the west, it is mythic, small-town, and comfortingly average. The convention center was next to the grain elevator.

 

Some like it hot; I do, it was, and I left the building every chance I could. The gym was pleasantly cool, and the convention center itself was vast and modern, including a food stall, and a beautiful on-site theatre. If you were next door, this was a very good festival site, and there was little more you could want, except a car to make excursions out onto the land.

 

Dorm rooms were available; small, dank rooms, with springy beds. Not bad if you wanted to work on trampoline tricks, but too far away from the party. A mass exodus to nearer accommodation began immediately, destination of choice being the Holiday Inn, sharing the parking lot with the convention center, two blocks (across a pretty park) from downtown, with it's cafes, groceries, and microbrewery.

 

Want a nasty review? Give it up. I enjoyed myself immensely. Rapid City was fun. Ask any of the over 400 jugglers on hand. Intimate, perhaps, but I like it that way - not terribly many people, but a very high quality. Or was that just me? The absentee roster was long and illustrious, but Cindy Marvel showed, as did 2/3 of AirJazz, 1/3 of Blink, and both of Clockwork. All of Albert Lucas. Heavy midwestem attendance, and the video guy, he was there. With the magic of video, you can be, too! Stars were out in force in the middle of South Dakota, making the public show a gala event. The first event was another matter entirely.

 

CAN OPENER:

I asked Ben Schoenberg if he went to the chuckwagon dinner welcome party, and he began hitting himself in the head with a club, doing others. I asked if he paid the big price, and he went into everies. The video guy was hating it. Not only was it dark, it was dusty, leaving his tape-heads clogged. "Dark, clogged head" might describe the scheduling of this unwelcome party. It was like summer camp, gone as off as the beef, putting the "chuck" in chuckwagon. I wanted to call for a rescue. This must happen lots, because there wasn't a phone on premises. I finally made my escape, after trying to cage a ride in the parking lot for almost an hour. Todd was trying to bribe the bus drivers. We owe our sanity to Andy, missing Sky King's salt n' pepper syncopations, before the groan-ups confiscated the condiments.

 

The horror was forgotten as the fest built, becoming one of the best in memory. I missed the speeches on the first night, darn it, and didn't pay too much attention to the numbers competitions, because I was far more interested in checking out these excellent

 

GYM SHORTS:

Numbers weren't large in attendance, but there were plenty hanging over the heads of a whole pack of gymrats, including more than one female. An informal seven ball endurance broke out on the shallow end, where ex-junior Joey Cousin was sweating before the other kids finally dropped out. He reeled it in with relief. Joey set a numbers record with eight balls (22 catches), so watching him work bodes haute weirdness for the future.

 

Dynamite Mike Price barked with the big dogs at the impromptu seven ball stud jam, which featured the Arthur Lewbel runs (a messy disease), and Dan Bennet throwing a neat half-shower for variety, all in teeny tiny patterns. Mike was smooth sailing on cruise control with seven. I was asking for tricks, whereupon he threw in some under-the­leg throws. Not bad for a kid who used to wear a rainbow wig and calls himself "Sparkplug". He was hot, but I dropped and rolled when he effortlessly tossed a back throw that fell beautifully into place. He cruised one more round before finishing with a behind the back catch. He got REAL happy, and started looking around for the video camera.