Oh, brother, do our readers know how to have a ball! Taking a break from juggling their hectic lives, 10 of them tried a more entertaining brand of juggling and took a lesson from four acclaimed performers and all-around nutty guys, the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
When it came to making Q proud, these 10 didn’t drop the ball while learning from the pros on a recent Saturday at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago. OK, literally speaking, they dropped scads of them. But as brother Ivan put it, “to juggle, you have to drop a thousand balls,” so these people are well on their way to greatness! They didn’t give up, they didn’t give in–and though they won’t be giving the brothers a run for their money anytime soon, they improved tons. Look on as we catch them in the act:
The lesson starts easily enough. Under the watchful eye of brother Ivan (we’re sticking with stage names here), and as family and friends watch from the theater seats, each Q reader tosses up a lone ball and catches it. “We normally tell people to do this for two weeks and get comfortable with it,” Ivan says.
But time is not on our readers’ side. They have an hour to learn from the bros. And soon, the brothers are flying through the lesson. They explain in various ways that juggling is simply a matter of catching one ball, then another, then the next. But it’s clear, from the glazed looks all around, that the words are merely confusing. Juggling is simply more show than tell.
“You just have to practice,” Ivan says.
And that they do.
The brothers split up and roam the stage as the Q crew tosses balls to the rafters. Our jugglers tilt their heads back and gaze up hopefully, sometimes catching, sometimes ducking, and sometimes getting bonked good, as the balls fall.
As brother Pavel hovers, Dena Singleton, 33, takes a wide-legged stance, grips three balls and pumps her arms in front of her–without releasing the balls. “OK, here I go,” she mutters. “OK . . . OK . . . OK, I’m gonna do it now. . . . “
“You’re thinking too much,” Pavel tells her, and she laughs and lobs a ball into space. Then she lets loose of another–and catches the first.
“Did you get that?” she screams to a friend in the audience who’s holding a camera.
Abra Chusid, 17, shifts from one foot to another, gripping the balls as she looks around the stage. She turns and bumps into Karamazov Brother Alexei.
“Oh, oh . . . a killing blow!” he screams, hunching over and grabbing his arm. Chusid’s eyes widen, but Ivan shakes his head as if to say, Ignore the drama king. “We just saw `Gangs of New York,’ ” he explains. “You’ll get it if you see it.”
Alexei laughs. He stands at Chusid’s shoulder, watching as she repeatedly tosses her three balls sky high, drops them, then tries again.
Ivan looks over. “There’s very little upper-arm movement needed,” he says. “Use the wrist area.”
Then Alexei tells Chusid to juggle two balls; he’s going to toss a third into the mix.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says with a nod.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Ready?”
“Yes!”
He tosses a ball in front of her; she misses it, stomps her foot and wails, “I wasn’t ready!”
On the other side of the stage, Leon Wleklinski, Mark Herman, Jack Kerr, Bob Argent and Tim Kalas casually juggle three balls. They clearly have the basics down and are ready for a bigger challenge.
“Try this,” Pavel offers. Juggling three balls, he bounces one off his elbow. “It gives you a break.”
The guys give the trick a whirl; balls richocet in various directions.
“Easy when you do it,” Argent mumbles.
Nearby, Karamazov Brother Dmitri is coolly flipping clubs through the air. He launches into a discussion on technique. The trick, he says, is to control the juggling tools so they ascend and descend in a tight, balanced fashion.
“Learning tricks is fun,” he says. “but don’t do that at the expense of pattern symmetry.”
Interesting concept–but some of our readers are trying merely not to get clobbered. Diane Wolff-Klammer flings her balls above her head, then bites her lip as if pondering where exactly they’re going to come down. Once they bounce to the stage, she chases them down.
“It’s good exercise, picking up things,” she says, giggling, her face flushed. (Within the hour, she will have improved impressively.)
Argent has moved to center stage, where he is a show of energy and concentration. Control isn’t his specialty, but enthusiasm is. He hurls the balls across the stage, loping around to retrieve them and heave them heavenward again.
“You need a bigger stage, Bob,” says his friend Brad Keith, who’s leaning onto the stage, taking photos. As Argent continues to bob and weave and throw and fetch, Keith says with a grin, “Bob just brought his wife home from the hospital with their first baby. He wasn’t even home an hour and he had to come here.” Argent’s wife, Keith explains, is “incredibly understanding.”
Meanwhile, Pavel is showing the hot-shot group how to add a body spin to the juggling combo. “Get your accurate throw in, then spin,” he says. “Keep your balance!” He adds, as Wleklinski falls over midspin.
At hour’s end, the Q crew is winded but grinning and juggling handily. Nothing fancy, but they have the basic three-ball maneuver down.
Still, they say, it’s not as if they have been let in on some giant juggling secrets.
“It’s like anything; you just have to practice,” Kerr says.
Kalas is up for that. “I liked doing it off the elbow,” he proclaims, and wife Robin rolls her eyes as the two head out the door. “He’s going to be doing that around the house all next week,” she says.
But others have too many balls in the air in real life. Take Wolff-Klammer. As she gathers up her two sons and a young friend to go home, she says, “Oh, yeah, with the kids off school for vacation, I’ll be having a lot of time to practice!”
Guess that’s the way the ball bounces (and bounces and bounces and bounces . . . ).
Wit, flattery get you anywhere
We asked readers to tell us why they must learn to juggle. Here are excepts from the entries that won us over:
Baby to diaper, tests to grade, room to wallpaper, gifts to buy, meals to cook, cars to park, songs to sing, calls to make, races to run, lottery to win, politicians to ignore, rebellions to quell, governments to topple, and a universe to center. Juggling is the only way I can possibly get everything accomplished.
–Bob Argent, 46, Chicago
I want to learn to juggle. Sit down and I’ll tell you why. I’m a good listener, I’m funny, I’m good at sports and I just got straight A’s on my report card. Now stand up. Now sit down. Now stand up, now sit. Did I move you? Hahaha.
–David Brablec, 9, Arlington Heights
If I can’t get my act together to juggle my kids and the rest of my life, maybe I could learn enough to juggle the kids themselves and be the hit of the family party and the playground circuit.
–Tim Kalas, 35, Homewood
I am a 33-, oops, 31-year-old, single, childless aunt of an 18-month-old girl. You know me–the fun aunt. Unfortunately, my sister does not see it as such. Ever since I carried my 6-day-old niece from the crib to her mother in the bed, not thinking a diaper was required for 3 feet, I have been on supervised visits. That may also be a result of teaching her to climb the stairs at 9 months. I figure entertaining my niece via juggling will keep me out of trouble with my sister and might even convince her to let me watch my niece alone for a couple of hours.
–Dena Singleton, 33, Chicago
Q note: Singleton was psyched about sharing her new skills with her niece. “It will entertain her, and there’s no danger in teaching her juggling,” she said.
Uh, Dena, didn’t you see the brothers’ performance before your lesson, in which they juggled glass bottles, meat cleavers and lighted torches?
“Oh, yeah, I forgot!” she said. “It probably could be dangerous after all. See, I guess that’s why I’m on probation with my niece.”
I want to be able to do something besides dance or make out on the dance floor at prom.
–Abra Chusid, 17, Buffalo Grove
If I knew how to juggle, whenever my mom came into my room I could quickly juggle my stuff in the air and then she couldn’t complain about all of it being on my floor.
–Grace Cowan, 13, Naperville
I have been interested in juggling since I was 6. I’ve practiced but never get very good. I live in a 12th-floor apartment, and the people upstairs and down complain when I hit the ceiling or drop things on the floor. So, I have to practice leaning out the window. And when I drop stuff, figure it out, it’s a real pain!
–Mark Herman, 37, Chicago
Juggling is a metaphor
For dance, and life, and maybe more.
A precision waltz of hand and eye,
Take inert things and make them fly!
Like life, there’s always one more ball,
To make you miss, to make them fall.
So I want to learn to juggle,
Even if it is a struggle,
Because it is no idle boast,
Jugglers have more balls than most!
–Jack Kerr, 49, Chicago
I am trying to teach myself to juggle, but I need your professional help, as it’s turning into more of a religious experience for me; I’m spending a lot of time on my knees looking for the balls I’ve dropped. . . . I promise to practice religiously until I’m a confirmed juggler!
–Leon Wleklinski, 57, Park Ridge
Maybe if I learned to juggle flaming rubber chickens, life would be easier. Most important, if you pick me, it will totally embarrass my children. By the way, you look great. Did you lose weight?
–Diane Wolff-Klammer, 42, Skokie
Look like a rookie if you must, but practice!
As our lesson session made clear, juggling is a matter of practice, practice, practice. These quick tips can get you started, so do try this at home:
– High-flying balls are the sign of a rookie. “Once you get control of the balls, you can bring them down,” Ivan says. “But while you’re learning, go ahead and throw them high if you have a hard time getting them stable. But when they go high, be sure to throw them closer in or they’ll go too far wide for you to catch them.”
– Chill out! Take Abra Chusid’s suggestion: “It relaxed me to be talking while I juggled.”
– Let the balls come to you. “I was trying to bring my hand up to the ball,” Diane Wolff-Klammer says. “Then I learned to let gravity work.”
–D.R.
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The Flying Karamazov Brothers perform “Catch!” through Jan. 19 at the Royal George Theatre.
