The eighth annual Big Red JuggleFest, an event that showcased a variety of juggling acts by internationally acclaimed performers, was held this past weekend in Bartels Hall.
The festival’s main act was Lazer Vaudeville, a show that combined juggling with lasers and backlighting and featured famous jugglers Carter Brown, Cindy Marvell and Nicholas Flair.
The entire event, which was planned by the Cornell Juggling Club, incorporated many different acts including a rope-spinning workshop, a beginner contact juggling workshop, advanced contact juggling, a devilstick workshop, ultimate Frisbee on unicycles and the Lazer Vaudeville show.
Officers of the club were responsible for coordinating competitions like five-ball endurance, quarter juggling, joggling, distance passing, and the best trick competition.
“Cindy Marvell, the first female to win the International Juggling Association’s championship was well received with her “Juggling and Movement” workshop. It was cool to be able to work with the performers and then see the tricks that they were teaching you show up on stage integrated into their show,” said Sarah Bates ’07.
In addition to their individual acts, the performers led several of the workshops. Brown taught the rope-spinning workshop while Flair taught a boxes workshop.
The turnout for this year’s festival was great in number and diversity. Patrick Morse ’07, vice president of the club, explained how people came from many different places to participate in the event.
“We were excited by the turnout of the juggling festival. With people from all over the East Coast and even as far as Germany in attendance, the festival provided a forum for advanced jugglers to exchange juggling tricks as well as teach tricks to new and intermediate jugglers” he said.
“Since we were the new group officers it was tough to learn how to plan the event while learning so many new things. Even though we were nervous about it, it all came out really well,” said Brian Goodfellow ’06.
Like Goodfellow, Morse also felt the pressure to put on good acts and provide events for this year’s festival because all of the officers were new to the planning aspect of the event.
“We were uncertain about being able to pull off a festival of this nature seeing as none of us had ever done this before, but thanks to Brian’s leadership, our officers put together an awesome festival. Next year, we expect our 9th festival to be even better,” Morse said.
Archived article by Teah Colson
Sun Staff Writer