Juggling is serious business. My bad for thinking clowns and circuses and fun. In fact, among the first statements in the "Rules and Regulations" of the World Juggling Federation: "Attire not permitted: Full or partial clown costumes and/or makeup that resembles the makeup of a clown or mime or anything inconsistent with a normal daily appearance similar to gym attire or casual attire."
According to Jason Garfield, president of the World Juggling Federation: "When you see the competitions, they're dressed in the clothes they practice in. You don't get points for dressing up, and it gets in the way anyway. They are only going to be able to juggle their best if they are dressed in what they are comfortable wearing when they actually practice."
In fact, Garfield, who has organized the World Juggling Federation conference that took place at the Riviera last week, is trying hard to present juggling as a sport more than an entertainment. "If you are a juggler performing for an audience that doesn't know about juggling, you know you don't have to push yourself to the highest level of juggling. So you aren't going to see skill typically." So Garfield's rules go far beyond clown makeup. The rules also include 14 other banned items like "tie-dye T-shirts or any other clothing bearing the tie-dye colors" and "court jester hats" and "balloons of any kind" and, of course, "rubber chickens." These items aren't just forbidden from being used or worn by the jugglers in competition; Garfield has banished them from the entire convention.
So it was a good thing I did not happen to have my Grateful Dead shirt on when I headed to the Riviera to join the 200 to 250 juggling enthusiasts who were celebrating an art that dates back at least as far as 1781 BC (the approximate date of an Egyptian wall painting depicting juggling). This is actually the second convention Garfield has organized and he sees it as bringing a unique perspective to an ancient art, that of competitive sports:
"Before last year there had been juggling competitions. But there had never been a competition for juggling where it was just based upon how good of a juggler you are. There was always something else like how you incorporate your juggling into a performance, how you dress or how you move around on stage, all of which are irrelevant to your juggling skill. This is the first competition based on juggling skills."
So, what makes a great juggler? Is it the number of objects or what is done with the objects?
"If you are doing six or seven clubs that is rare, so you definitely get points for that. But you can do stuff with three clubs that are harder than seven. People understand the difficulty of juggling five clubs behind your back or throwing all the clubs up in the air and spinning around. But there's not really one trick that means you're the best juggler in the world. But there are moves that, most likely, if you can do them ... would put you among the most outstanding jugglers."
And the skills on display were extraordinarily impressive. I had never heard of a diabolo before I saw the Diabolo Competition, but I am now in awe of the beauty in manipulating what looks like either a giant yo-yo or a small free weight suspended on a string attached at both ends to a stick. On the most basic levels the contestants would take the spool diabolo and fling it off the string and then catch it, or roll the diabolo up and down the string while holding onto the sticks in each hand. Of course, as impossible as either of these activities would be for most people—that's the most simple of the manipulations of diabolo. The moves for diabolo tricks have catchy names like "suicide" (which means letting go of a stick) and "infinite suicides" and "genocide," and, my favorite, "duicide," defined as being similar to a suicide attempt but letting go of both sticks.
I got to see a successful duicide, too. The winner of Diabolo, William Wei-Liang Lin, 15, used three diabolos simultaneously in the air and seemed at one point to abandon holding either stick. Then, with just a touch of the string and a swift twist, he pulled the entire package (three spools, the two sticks and the string) back together into his control. I can only say "seemed" because it was all in a blur of motion that, based on my eyesight, violated some basic rules of physics like gravity.
Lin, who came from Taiwan for this competition, does not speak English. But according to his schoolteacher, Angela Wen Hsiu Tseng (not a specialized juggling teacher, but his gym teacher), who traveled here with him, diabolo is very popular with children in Taiwan. "He came to my class and was very interested in this so I teach him," she says. Lin has been working at diabolo since he was 9 for an hour every day and longer on vacations and weekends. "In the beginning it was just for fun," his teacher says, "but then I realized that he had talent and I tried to push him to do more things and he can do that. There are competitions in Taiwan and he won a medal at one of them." Lin is so dedicated to diabolo that he hasn't even considered leaving the convention to see anything else in Las Vegas.
I find Garfield to get his reaction to the extraordinary performance by this dedicated 15-year- old juggler and discover that I have made another faux pas.
"Diabolo is not really a juggling event," Garfield says. His disapproval is obvious. "It is more an auxiliary prop event that does become juggling when you get into two or three of them. But with one it is just a manipulation skill. Clubs, balls and rings are the standard objects."
I decide right then and there to send diabolo winner William Wei-Liang Lin a brand new tie-dye T-shirt.