Groundhog Day
Jugglers Festival 2000

by Charles Shapiro

A record 134 people attended the 22nd annual Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival, held February 4, 5 and 6 2000 at the Grady High School Girls Gym in Midtown Atlanta. Some came from as far away as upstate New York, and one juggler bicycled all the way from Birmingham Alabama, a distance of 150 miles, in two days. Most found it worth the trip.

One measure of just how exciting the festival was was the jump in juggling meeting attendance. In some previous years, as few as three people have shown up to meetings immediately after the festival. This year, about 15 people attended the Tuesday meeting, and 16 people were at the Thursday one, including several strangers who attended Groundhog. Groundhog day is a good festival date because it's right toward the end of winter, just when you're starting to flag and the fight for indoor juggling space seems never-ending. One juggler's girlfriend expressed new determination to work on her juggling, since "Everyone else was having such a great time, and there I was sitting on the benches 'cause I couldn't juggle well enough. . .".

We lucked into a lagniappe on Friday night, when the custodian did not show up until 11 pm, allowing the festival an unplanned extra hour. Rodger French also drycleaned the AJA banner this year, revealing new layers of archaeological meaning in the hallowed symbol. Both Louis Zeller's and Toni Shifalo's signatures became visible, as well as the date 1978. Club banners were sparse this year. Perhaps we are drawing more unaffiliated jugglers.

Seven intrepid performers competed for the Coveted Phil this year. Matt Henry started with a sophisticated diabolo act featuring a handstick with two large sheet-metal hooks on the butt, which enabled him to throw and catch multiple diabolos in novel ways. Nathan Darrel followed with a story juggling act featuring some good three and five-ball bouncing, but marred by gratuitous proselytizing. Next, T. J. Robinson juggled torches, and Brian Pettit worked with a fire devil-stick. Sean Mckinney did a very pretty routine with exactly four balls, a rare treat. The family club-passing team The Hamiltons displayed their clean three-man club passing routines. Cindy Marvell of Lazer Vaudeville finished the competition with her graceful solo 3, 4, and 5-club routine.

Nathan Darrel took home the Most Amazing trophy, Sean Mckinney got away with Most Magnificent, and The Hamiltons picked up Most Spectacular. Bill Giduz actually provided four Groundhog trophies this year, so we presented a Groundhog to Rick Purtee, a stalwart AJA member who is one of the two or three AJA members who has never missed a festival since the very first one. He is moving to Washington State and will be sorely missed here in Georgia.

The three finalists in the yo-yo contest wowed the crowd with a freestyle contest while the judges conferred, showing off intricate string tricks and sleeper moves. Each of them received the traditional patch, with WWW and XXX getting second and third, and YYY getting a first place for his unique and graceful 2-yo-yo tricks, which included some moves that looked close to club-swinging. 

Intrepid AJA member Keith Watson arranged for Georgia Tech professor Chris Atkeson to come to the festival and show his amazing films of robots juggling. These went far beyond Claud Shannon's mechanical sculptures and into the world of serious robotics. Among his videotapes were views of machines actually learning to balance poles on their 'hands' with only visual feedback, and machines which could play kendama and toss-juggle three objects. Dr. Atkeson conceded that so far humans were far superior to machines at both learning and juggling, but his research showed that juggling is a good robotics problem -- complex enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be possible. His videos showed both how far robotics has come, and how far it has yet to go.

The midnight Cabaret featured the Deluxe Vaudeville Orchestra, Rodger French's tango band. It officially started with majic by Dan Garrett, who showed himself a trouper when one of his tricks pooped out on him. Next up was Jeff Daymont, doing his startling cigar-box manipulations. Sean Mckinney proved he could do more than just four balls with some wonderful 5, 6, and 7-ball juggling, including several interesting multiplex variations and a five-ball multiplex back-cross. We also presented the Mouse award to Chris Purtee here, for multiple services rendered as he grew up with us. Two of Greg Cohen's people showed us that it's possible to drink a beer and put on a juggling show on stage with some top manipulations. Peter Panic did his water-polo-ball and ping-pong ball act, which features a 5 polo-ball cascade and a variety of balances and spins. Lazer Vaudeville closed the show with a 3-man act which featured 7th club work and a 6-club chase. It ended with a solid 10-club drop-back line.

The public show was purposely abbreviated to increase the amount of actual juggling time we could enjoy on Sunday. But about 600 civilians showed up to watch it. One telling moment was when Rodger asked the crowd how many people had seen the television coverage of the festival on Saturday. Only about six raised their hands. Our juggling audiences tend not to watch a lot of TV.

Randy Fenster started with a basic 3-ball demonstration which built to juggling 3 balls ona unicycle. Next, Matt Henry showed off his 5, 6, and 7 bean-bag juggling, then did some marvelous moves with multiple diabolos. A couple of the yo-yoists next showed some smooth yo-yo tricks. Rick Purtee, Keith Watson, Carl Raffa, and Charles Shapiro of the AJA were next up with their four-man club passing routine, which finished with a graceful four-man weave. Warren and Pam Hamilton -- the two parents of The Hamiltons -- next did an 'experimental' piece involving some interesting transitions with three and four clubs between two people.

The festival concluded at Thai One On, where a huge table of people feasted until well after dark and Fran got on the board with a 30-pepper dinner. Much beer was consumed, and we made plans to celebrate the 50th annual in similar style.

-- Charles Shapiro