* IJA member Toby Ayer, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who performed in a circus for six wars, was among the 32 Americans recently awarded a Rhodes Scholarship covering all expenses for two or three years of graduate study at Oxford University in England. Toby is a member of the MIT Juggling Club and honed his skills during years working with Vermont's Circus Smirkus. Rob Mermin, Smirkus director, used to introduce his juggler by saying that Ayer was living proof parents should have no fear of letting their children run away and join the circus!

 

Ayer is majoring in linguistics and physics at M.I.T, and will study for a philosophy degree in general linguistics and comparative philology at Oxford. An avid rower at M.I.T., he also plans to try out for Oxford's "blue boat varsity crew team.

 

* The Juggling Information Service created a new "Juggling Hall of Fame" on December 19, the 99th anniversary of the death of Enrico Rastelli. Befitting the date, the first inductee was Rastelli himself. The Hall will honor some of the greatest jugglers who have ever lived, giving each inductee a brief biography, photos and other historical information. A new inductee will be added to the Hall each month, and nominations may be sent to the Hall's director, Andrew Conway.

 

* Comedy juggler Billy Prudhomme is featured in the new book, Teenagers: Preparing for the Real World, by Chad Foster. In a chapter encouraging teens to follow their dreams, Foster recalls watching as Prudhomme practiced

juggling for long hours in his backyard. They met again years later, when Prudhomme was performing as a featured entertainer on a Caribbean cruise. The book notes that following his dream paid off for Prudhomme, who now travels all over the world and

makes a good living doing what he enjoys.

 

* The IJA's 1995 Founder's Award and People's Choice Award winner, John Gilkey, will perform for the next two years as a non­juggling principal character in a new Cirque du Solei! production. Gilkey left San Francisco in mid-January to begin rehearsals in Montreal, where the show opens on April 23.

 

* Having taught United Airlines senior vice president Chris Bowers how to juggle while on Maui, Norm Estin has gone on to teach juggling to at least one member of the flight crew on every United flight he's on... and he travels a lot! The galleys offer the most space, and most of the flight attendants "catch on" quickly. He usually leaves them a set of beanbags. In airports, a short little routine and some instruction at the gate is even occasionally rewarded with an upgraded seat!

 

* Racketball courts in the University of Vermont's Patrick Gym, site of the IJA's 1994 festival, are hosting jugglers again. Will Roya founded the UVM juggling club at the beginning of this school year, and got official Student Government Association sanction shortly thereafter. Expert juggler Jody Starr serves as "technical advisor" of the club. The club meets on Thursdays, and features a World Wide Web home page.

 

* Shortly after winning the IJA's Team Championship this summer, Blink won the Dance Portland Choreography Showcase in Portland, Maine. Jay Gilligan, Fritz Grobe and Morty Hansen performed their five minute ball act as one of 15 entrants in the showcase. Other entrants asked, "Is it really dance?" but the competition adjudicator simply replied, "It had integrity and was entertaining. What else matters?!" As winners, they also were asked to perform in the showcase public show the following weekend with seven other dance groups. Blink performed at the Celebration Barn Theatre in Maine last fall, and conducted their first tour in November through the Midwest in connection with the Bloomington Jugglefest.

 

* Kevin Delagrange, president of the Northern Ohio Juggling Institute, figures he and his trained instructors have taught more than a million people ­ mostly youngsters - how to juggle since 1977.

 

* New Zealand's premiere full-time circus training course, CircoArts, opened in March at the Christchurch Polytechnic. The course follows a successful six-month trial  juggling, clowning and acrobatics' course run by the polytechnic in 1994. CircoArts will provides an intensive one-year course in circus arts, street performance, theatre skills and improvisation. Students will receive training in a range of juggling, clowning, dance / mime, balancing, acrobatics and aerials skills. Theory units on small business, first aid, physiology, anatomy and circus history will make up another component. Second and third years of specialist circus arts training are under development. For information and an enrollment form con­tact: Christchurch Polytechnic; New Zealand.