Going Beyond Gold

The Dew Drop Jugglers Bare a Championship Soul

by David Walbridge

 

As childhood friends, they knew they wanted to juggle. To perform.  And to win. In July of 1996 they reached this goal, winning three gold medals as the first place team at the lJA's Rapid City festival team championship.  This is their story.

 

Performing all over the midwest, this juggling trio amazes audiences with both high-quality technical juggling and crowd-pleasing comedy. After 10 years as an act, their juggling, characters and show reflect a smooth sureness that belies thousands of hours of rehearsal.

 

A favorite act at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, they perform more than 200 shows a year, sometimes as many as seven a day. In 1995, they celebrated their 1,000 th show together.

 

The Dew Drops have never shied away from competing. They challenge themselves to create, perform, and play hard. In addition to winning the Gold Medal in the 1996 IJA Rapid City team championships, they also won bronze medals in the IJA Montreal Teams Championship and have also won numerous combat, prop-specific and individual competitions. Some of the awards they've gained over the years include: Jason Le May won the "Cigar Box Open" in 1992. Mick Lunzer won the "Open Open" in 1996 for a ring and stick thing. Jeff Kasper is the 1996 Combat champion.

 

This Juggler's World reporter sat down at a neighborhood Perkins and collected both a history of the group and a taste of what it's like to be a Dew Drop.

 

JW: Who are the Dew Drop jugglers?

A: Jeff Kasper - The nice guy. He wears blue. Jason Le May - The

quiet guy. He wears red. Mick Lunzer - The wild guy. He wears yellow. Yes, they always wear those colors on stage. Why? Even they don't remember.

 

JW: How did it all start?

A: All three were members of a group called the Juggler's Five, which soon became the Juggler's Three. Then they started looking for a better name. They knew what they didn't want - any number or "Brothers" in the name. Watching a practice, Mick's dad said, "You guys drop so much you should call yourselves the 'Do Drop' jugglers!" With slight alteration, the name stuck. Their first show together was in the summer of 1986. They opened for the Garcia Family Fliers in Red Wing, Minn. They premiered such great material as egg juggling and handcuffed juggling. And their greatest line was, "What kind of gasoline comes from Cuba? Castro oil"

 

JW: What did they think about their first show?

Jeff: People were paying us to juggle - it was dang cool!

 

JW: What did you do in those shows?

Jeff: We juggled real machetes. Sharp.

Mick: We didn't know any better.

Jay: We knew they were sharp!

Mick: We cut ourselves, so then we tried sickles.

 

From there, the show improved. They practiced, passed and wrote material. They traveled to the IJA festival in Baltimore in 1989, saw the Passing Zone win and they knew they wanted to compete. In St. Louis in 1991 they competed for the first time. They used a cat burglar theme, stealing their props from a museum. They had practiced five nights a week for six months in a cold warehouse. But their big trick, cigar box passing, was overshadowed by Double Trouble doing the same thing, only better, just before they went on. That was just the beginning of their troubles.

 

Mick: We bombed; considerably.

Jay: 22 drops

Jeff: Maybe more. We'd like to thank the IJA for editing most of those out of the competition videotape.

 

JW: What are your individual strengths?

Mick: Jeff can catch anything under his chin.

Jeff: I can. (He demonstrates with a butter knife.)

Jay: Cigar boxes.

 

In 1992 they went to the IJA's Montreal festival to compete again. Newly energized, their preparation included not only the usual hours of practice, but watching Indiana Jones movies as well. To get into the roles, they wore fedoras, cracked whips and even appeared on stage with three days worth of beard. They captured the bronze medal, and the attention of many in the IJA.

 

Mick: We didn't know what we were getting into.

Jeff: And we did it anyway!

Jay: It was our biggest medal to date. We knew we were working in the right direction.

 

JW: Is that when you came up with back to back to back ?

Jeff: We said, "If we drop the machetes in the competition, just run!" We thought of the line when we were driving home from Montreal.

 

The line comes from a machete juggling routine in which the three of them juggle nine machetes standing back to back... to back. (Because there's three of them.) It has become so popular with audiences that they can't take it out of the show.

 

JW: You didn't compete at all between 1991 and 1996. What were you doing?

Jeff: We were focused on our stage act. And one year we got really good shows that conflicted with the festival dates.

Jay: We were also trying to come up with a theme.

Jeff: Not all of our themes are movie themes.

Jay: Our worst theme idea? In some sense, we were going to be earth, wind and fire.

 

JW: How do you chose what to do in your show?

Jay: Probably the biggest defining element is seeing what we don't like.

Mick: We try not to be mean. We've seen magicians who seem to say to their audiences: "You're a dork! I can do this and you can't. Go sit down!"

Jeff: In our show it's, "We're dorks and we're letting you in on the secret! "

 

The 1996 gold medal act... In Rapid City the Dew Drops rocked with diabolo passing, clubs and a great "Mission Impossible" theme. Tight choreography, a double agent and very solid numbers captured both the audience and the gold. Ochen Kaylan joined the guys early in the year to help with direction and choreography of the piece. Here's what he said about working with the Dew Drops.

Ochen: My job with the Dew Drops seemed to change every few weeks. It began with them asking my opinion on their diabolo work. Originally it was pretty much the same piece (as seen in the competition) but with two diabolos. After watching it a few times, I mentioned that there was plenty of room for a third and told them where. They thought about it, tried it out a couple of times, and decided to go with it. This happened a few times in a few different parts of the routine. They just sorta kept asking things, inviting me to more of their rehearsals, taking (and trusting) my advice, until they sat me down and asked me to direct and choreograph their piece. I'd seen the piece a number of times by then, and knew it needed a decent amount of work. The juggling was very good, but all they really had was a series of tricks and background music.

 

We started from the center out, working on transitions between juggling sequences, creating some character spots, taking more time with the audience, and working our way out to the beginning and end. I had thought about adding an agent/assistant character (played in Rapid City by Jerry Martin), to move props and add to the story.

 

It took a bit of convincing for them to accept the proposal of taking the first 60 seconds to do some character stuff. It's difficult to not juggle for the first 60 to 90 seconds of a seven-minute routine, but they did finally agree, and I think it worked well. The ending created the closure, and it all made sense together. I think they all did a tremendous job.