In your article on numbers juggling in the last issue, how can you have me say on page 15 that there have been several five club jugglers as long as I can remember and then on page 16 have me say that Felker was the only one at the '77 convention doing 5 clubs? Stu Raynolds, the host of that very convention, was there doing 5 as was Hovey Burgess and probably several others. I think a correction is in order on that point.

Regarding the height Ignatov throws 11 rings, I don't claim personal knowledge but a simple measurement of my own photo of him there shows the rings only going to a height of less than 20 feet off the floor, assuming Ignatov is about 6 feet tall, which he is. Perhaps the actual top of the pattern is a couple feet higher than shows in the photo but certainly is not another 10-12 feet higher (as the article said).

Juggling has remained as a mere curiosity and relatively unimportant art form. Why has this happened and how could it be changed?

The main hindrance could be seen in the abundance of traditional material used in last year's convention. A majority of the performers in Cleveland projected the same clone-like personality of a sportsman. The numbers and joggling competitions encouraged this stagnation. Plagiarism and repetition plagued the free-style competitions as well. I agree with Francis Brunn, who stated, "Juggling is an art form. It is not a thing of doing tricks or juggling so many. There has to be more to it."

The philosophy of who can juggle longer, more, or trickier should not pertain to an art. When something is beautiful it does not have to be packaged within a joke, compared to an opponent, or tested for a record.

If greater expression is communicated with one or two objects, isn't it more worthwhile? Isn't it more entertaining? Pantomime and dance, art forms that seldom use any objects, have come of age. They communicate dramatically in a sphere of many emotions, while most jugglers have used comedy or spectacularism.  Until there is a greater effort to expand the contents within routines and pieces, juggling will never be a fine art or contained in one.

There is a new synthesis due in the arts. In order to enrich emotional and intellectual content, juggling needs to be integrated with dance, mime and other arts of motion. This would open up creative choices that would fertilize the confining traditions of today's conventions.

Many of the available artistic styles are limited because street performing narrows options considerably. The average street is a noisy, windy, precarious place to perform. The street embeds compromises into jugglers because of situational sacrifices which are endured in order to make money.

There is only one place where a juggler can consistently perform utilizing a wide range of juggling techniques, special effects, lighting, sound, dance, etc. That is on a stage in a theatre.

Given that kind of freedom, juggling would be .. able to excel into a new sensation.

Audiences need to be educated into seeing the versatility that juggling can (but hasn't) exhibited. We live in an age of great creative possibilities. We have, for the first time, precision made, well engineered equipment available, made of light, affordable plastics. New technology has created sensational lighting and special effects. Along with these new tools, we must derive the ingenuity, interdiscipline and perseverance to theatricalize juggling.

Just a note to let you know the latest... Karen has completed her contract with the "Bamum" touring company and I have finished my solo act with Carnival Cruise Lines.  For the summer, we are employed by SUN LINE, aboard the M/V Stella Maris. We perform twice weekly on the high seas, cruising the Mediterranean visiting ports in Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Yugoslavia. We plan to study with Jacques Lecoq in Paris in October.

We will miss not being at the IJA convention, but send our best wishes for its success.