Madison College Hosts Madfest Juggling Festival

Performers at Madfest Juggling Festival appreciate the gravity of the situation

By ROB THOMAS | The Capital Times | rthomas[at] madison [dot] com | Posted: Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:00 am | No Comments Posted

What does it take to become a juggler? Do you have to be especially coordinated, or particularly quick-witted?

That helps, of course. But Katherine Girdaukas, coordinator of this year’s Madfest Juggling Festival, said the main ingredient for success is desire, the willingness to pick up that ball or club that just bounced off the floor and try again.

“All it is is taking time to practice,” Girdaukas said. “Like any skill, there’s going to be people who can pick it up faster, but that’s to be expected. If you have that desire, you’ll be able to push through the hard times of dropping a lot, and get to the good times of seeing a pattern starting to come together. Those are the really magical times when you’re juggling.”

This weekend, audiences can see some of the best jugglers in the country do amazing things with balls, clubs, rings — even a bowler hat and umbrella. But the hallmark of the 47th Annual Madfest Juggling Festival (by the way, the name is an inside joke — the festival has been called the “47th Annual” every year since it started in 1991) is an eagerness for jugglers to share and teach their tricks to fellow jugglers and to anybody who’s interested in learning.

Juggler Steven Ragatz, who has performed with Cirque du Soleil and will be a guest performer at this year’s festival, said the juggling community is very different from something like the magic community, where magicians zealously guard their tricks from other magicians. For juggling, there really are no secrets to how tricks are done.

“It’s not proprietary,” he said. “You’re not evaluated or judged strictly on originality. Originality is encouraged and supported, however the fact ... that you can just sit back and appreciate the technique means that there’s no need for trade secrets. Plus, (jugglers) tend to be a bunch of hippies who like sharing things anyway.”

The festival is basically divided into two parts. The centerpiece is the MadFest Juggling Extravaganza, an all-star showcase of local and national juggling talent that often sells out. This year’s Extravaganza takes place at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 16 at the Wisconsin Union Theater, 800 Langdon St. It features Ragatz and the comedy-juggling duo known as Smirk, along with local performers like the Mad Five and Girdaukas’ group, Mobile ZOC, who are all part of Madison Area Jugglers, the sponsors of the event.

But the rest of the festival, which runs Friday through Sunday in the Redsten Gymnasium at Madison Area Technical College’s Truax Campus, is basically a free event for jugglers of all skill levels. Visitors will see all kinds of jugglers getting together to perform and to share ideas.

In fact, Girdaukas said, anyone who comes can basically get their own “juggling counselor,” and get one-on-one lessons on how to juggle three balls in the air.

“One of our goals has been to keep the convention free,” she said. “Juggling is very much for the community. It’s something that you don’t need to be a millionaire to do. If you’ve got three oranges, you can start learning how to juggle.”

Girdaukas said she used to be the most uncoordinated person she knew, so she is a testament to the theory that anyone can learn to juggle if they have the desire.

Mobile ZOC is planning a daring juggling stunt for the Saturday night concert: Four members of the club will pass clubs back and forth while riding two-wheeled skateboards called RipSticks.

“As far as we know, this has never been done before,” she said. “But that’s really hard to say in juggling, because there’s so many people out there and so much creativity.”

Ragatz, who lives in Indiana, is one of those envelope-pushing jugglers. He toured with the famed Cirque du Soleil for a decade, but his act stands in stark contrast to the wild costumes and props that that troupe is known for.

Instead, Ragatz appears on stage in a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase and umbrella as if he’s on his way to an office job. But those objects and other mundane ones are transformed as he both juggles and performs “contact juggling,” in which the objects roll across his arms and shoulders, seemingly of their own volition.

Ragatz said he was inspired by a college class he took on surrealism, and particularly the work of French artist Rene Magritte, whose paintings use mundane images (including the iconic image of a man in a bowler hat and suit) in unusual ways.

“It was an art form and philosophy that I connected with,” Ragatz said. “I liked that, taking real objects and transforming them and really kind of celebrating that subconscious transformation. To me it provided a good angle, because I wanted to use ... found objects, objects that people relate to in their lives — a hat, an umbrella, a briefcase — as opposed to made-up objects, like a shiny juggling club that nobody really has.”

Ragatz has been to the MadFest festival before and is looking forward to coming back, saying that even within the juggling world it’s considered a very special event.

“It really is a one-of-a-kind sort of thing that they have the people who will organize a festival big enough and elaborate enough to draw the kind of talent they need to put on such a show,” he said. “And they do it every year, and they do it in January in Madison, Wisconsin!”

Different juggling communities are known for different skills, and Madison is known nationally as a haven for great club passing. Girdaukas said she’s not sure why, but a lot of talented club passers ended up living in Madison and have handed down their techniques.

In a way, group club passing serves as a metaphor for the collegial nature of the juggling community, where everybody passes on tips and tricks to everybody else.

“Everyone’s needed in these patterns,” Girdaukas said. “Everyone has value, so it’s of value to the community to help each other out, so the group as a whole can (master) harder and better and cooler patterns. It’s all about teamwork, about knowing each others’ boundaries and also pushing those boundaries.”

Girdaukas said she’s found that the lessons she’s learned while learning to juggle — don’t give up, and always keep trying new and harder things — have spilled over into the rest of her life as well.

“You also have to push yourself and try something that you’re almost sure you’re going to fail at,” she said. “Being fearless towards failure is the key. That’s something that juggling has redefined for me. Immediate failure is no longer daunting for me.”

MADFEST JUGGLING FESTIVAL

(Free convention)

When: Friday, Jan. 15 to Sunday, Jan. 17

Where: Redsten Gymnasium, Madison Area Technical College Truax Campus, 3330 Anderson St.

Hours: 6 p.m. to midnight Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Admission: Free

For more information: madjugglers.com

MADFEST JUGGLING EXTRAVAGANZA

(Ticketed show)

When: Saturday, Jan. 16, 7 p.m.

Where: Wisconsin Union Theater, 800 Langdon St.

Admission: $10 in advance through 265-2787 or uniontheater.wisc.edu, or $13 at the door