Morales Looks At Circus World From Flat On His Back

By Mariah Skinner

 

Pedro Morales is one of my fellow performers now on the Famous Cole Indoor Circus. He is working two acts in the show ­hand balancing and foot juggling.

 

Morales, 44, began to perform in his father's hand balancing act at age four. His father, whose multi-talented family had produced as many as seven different acts, taught him the basics of foot juggling. By the time he was 12, young Pedro had framed his own act, which has remained essentially the same from that day to this.

 

Lying on an inclined "bed" that elevates his legs, Morales "pedipulates" (or is it "antipodates?") three differently shaped props which are handed to him in turn by his wife, Sheila. They are a long cylinder, a Maltese cross and a large, heavy barrel. He spins them in three different planes and turns them end-over-end solely using his feet. I have never seen him drop. Two things that are impressive about Morales' act are the large size of his props and the speed with which he causes them to spin and tumble. The effect is heightened by the sparkling decorations on his props.

 

Morales regards foot juggling as a second act, with hand balancing as his primary act. "Today there is only a handful of performers whose main source of income is juggling," he said. "That wasn't true 20 years ago. Today juggling is, for most circus people, a second act."

 

Among those who are earning their living solely from juggling, Morales most admires Rejean St. Jules "for his style," and Wally Eastwood, "for his speed." His friends in the professional juggling community include Benji Hill and Jerome Ellis.

 

Among other antipodists, Morales especially commends Australian Doug Ashton, who foot juggles two objects simultaneously, and Chester Cable, a Guinness record holder for his ability to foot juggle such large, heavy objects as a dining room table.

 

Though born near the end of the "Golden Age of Vaudeville," Morales waxes nostalgic about the period. With his father he worked hotels, clubs and burlesque houses all over the U.S. and Canada. "We could play a year of two­week stands in Montreal with no repeats," he said. This enabled the Morales family to live for extensive periods in Montreal, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. He now lives in Brandon, Fla., with his wife. His son, Paul, who used to perform with them, has decided instead to pursue a career as a boxer.

 

During his childhood on the road, Morales attended as many as eight different schools in a single year. His family also used the Calvert School correspondence course to educate their son. He is a Civil War buff, and visited many of the sites of that conflict during his travels. During a performing hiatus in the 1970s, Morales studied engineering at a community college. For a time, while his young son finished elementary school, he worked as a plumber.