42-2,p16

Dieter Tasso's Way is Stacking Cups the Hard Way!

By Bruno Quintero

There are days when nothing goes right. Today, for example, I spent half the day trying a false cascade with seven balls that Antonio Bucci showed me. He can do it easily. But for me, it just doesn't work. My left hand throw is always too far in front and if I try to correct it, it goes too far behind. After four hours of infuriating attempts, my morale was lower than the column of mercury in a barometer during a hurricane. I was thinking of quick suicide, then to run away and begin a new life in Transylvania. Then my spirits lifted as I remembered I was going to see Dieter Tasso at the Crazy Horse that night!

I left my frustrations behind and got a ticket for the most sensual and hilarious show in Paris.

The first act was a dance number with 15 beautiful women. Luckily it was hot in the room, because with what they were wearing you could hardly tailor a patch for a oneeyed canary! I don't need to draw you a picture! The audience seemed to enjoy it, but I was waiting for Dieter Tasso.

Finally he took the stage, as he has almost every night for six months a year for the last 10 years.

The audience, which came mainly to see the women, was a little discontent at the beginning. But Dieter won them over completely in presenting the perfect picture of elegance and relaxation and a flurry of gags he weaved into his feats of dexterity. The applause that followed his act must have been humiliating for the dancers, because the audience was completely sold on the juggler. Dieter bowed and, always smiling, left the stage.

The show broke down into three parts. It began with hats. Dieter pulled off the difficult stunt of pretending to be a bad juggler. The art of making the audience believe that the trick is about to fail, that the balance is so precarious that everything is bound to fall to the ground, is only successfully presented by the best. Dieter is the master of this material. He knows how to make the tension mount to a paroxysmal point, and then to release it just before the trick doesn't crash.

One example was when he began to throw the hat in the air and to a balance on his nose. In fact, it hit him in the eye, but as he grimaced with that fact he caught the falling hat on his foot He then finished the trick by tossing it from his foot to a balance on his nose!