Festival de jonglage contemporain et improvisé de Malakoff, in Paris 14.-17.6.2001

It’s not easy to write about life on Planet Malakoff. One week of watching and listening to people like Jérôme Thomas, Michael Moschen, Sergei Ignatov and Karl-Heinz Ziethen. It really was a one of its kind gathering of legends and new talents to come together for one week to discuss and practice juggling together. It was a very intense week, so full of new information that eventually one day with Ville Walo and Jay Gilligan we simply had to take a short break from it all and go to see Paris. And where did we go? To a juggling shop and to Les Halles to see jugglers of course...
Some crazy moments from the festival come to mind: People were watching Jérôme rehearse his new show Cirque Lili with his director. He was trying a double pirouette with a hat, but kept missing the catch. Suddenly Sergei Ignatov jumped up and started to give an improvised lesson about pirouette technique. Sergei Ignatov half shouting, jumping up and down for about 10 minutes, Jérôme Thomas listening with the hat in his hands and his director being very confused...Or Saturday night, when Karl-Heinz Ziethen was jamming in the bar to Jay Gilligan’s performance music. I’m afraid it’s impossible for me to construct any kind of a logical story about the week, so I’ll merely list some of the key moments of the festival:
Jérôme Thomas performed his new show Cirque Lili in a specially built circus tent with a wooden structure. By staging the show in a tent, and structuring it as a collection of varied acts that follow each other, a strong link to circus tradition was created. Jérôme Thomas played interestingly with the relationship between contemporary and traditional circus. He had his circus orchestra (two excellent musicians) and even the obligatory animal and clown numbers of traditional circus. In two acts, one with iron balls, one with balloons, the balls represent the animals that Jérôme Thomas is training. Same concept, but a totally different approach and technique on both numbers. In one act he rolls all around the stage on an office chair with wheels, all the time juggling or bouncing 3-6 balls perfectly in time with the music. Another number is based on a very ‘simple’ move: you have a ball on the back of your hand. You roll it to a balance on your wrist. Then roll it back. Then find variations using two balls and both hands at the same time. Around this simple concept Jérôme Thomas has built a very beautiful piece of manipulation.
One of the absolute highlights of the week was the latest show from Martin Schwietzke’s company les Apostrophés. One musician, one juggler and one comedian make the most out of a quite minimal stage setting of three wooden screens. Classic gags of mime and visual comedy follow each other in a surreal stream with logic totally of its own. Some of the movements and gags were very subtly off-timed on purpose to create a distancing element. The show got a mixed reaction from the audience but I found it to be a genuinely honest, genuinely crazy and a very funny show.
Philippe Menard’s new solo show Ascenseur had a beautiful stage setting, good light design and some interesting work with video projections. Menard played with interaction between live and recorded juggling. He has choreographed juggling work for himself live together with recorded images of himself projected on a screen. Philippe has worked with Jérôme Thomas for many years and you can see this in his style (rhythm, movement).
Michael Moschen spent a lot of time during the week talking with other jugglers. He was interested to hear about the ideas of younger jugglers and to talk about his experiences. On sunday afternoon he tried to start a discussion about creating juggling work, but perhaps due to language difficulties it turned more into a lecture. He explained how he went to study the collection of Karl-Heinz Ziethen in the 1980’s and then started his creative work after that experience. It took him many years to find what he wanted to say, to create and perfect the techniques he was going use and then to build the actual performance pieces. One interesting thing to hear was that he’s creative process often goes in the order of concept-object-technique. For example the piece originally in Cirque du Soleil’s Mystere started by him thinking about the image of moonlight on water. After that he thought about the possible form of objects to be used and then started to search for ways of manipulation. Those who have seen the original piece know that it was something more than just another juggling act. As part of the festival he also performed a half an hour solo with some of his classics like crystal ball manipulation, metal sticks, ball bouncing rhythms and his new piece with three plastic cylinders. He didn’t have to do much else than to just walk on stage to fill the house with his charisma.
Sergei Ignatov. I’ve watched his act on video so many times in my life that I used to know it for every throw and catch. Perhaps not all of them were there anymore, but there certainly was more than enough to kick everybody’s butt! Five club backcrosses, nine ring pulldown and seven big stage balls. And like everybody else before me, I too have to ask: how can he start his seven with those? They really are that big. Sergei was assisted on stage by juggling teacher Nadejda Achvits from Moscow. During the week Nadejda gave two workshops on juggling technique. I attended two of her classes and got some very good advice about how to correct my homemade juggling technique. Sergei himself came to follow one of the classes and it didn’t take long until he practically ‘took over’. There I was, juggling five balls with Sergei Ignatov constantly slapping me on my arm: “Not the elbow! Not the elbow!” After a while I managed to concentrate a little bit better and it helped: “Left is better now, but when you think about your left you forget your right. Right was terrible!” He then spent a good 20 minutes trying to teach Jay Gilligan how to throw and catch one club. On the last day of the festival Sergei Ignatov talked about his long career and showed videos from his past together with Karl-Heinz Ziethen. Ignatov said that he had found the contemporary shows on the programme very interesting, and that he was happy to see that young people are trying to find their own way and style of juggling and are not only interested in money. “I’m 30 years late”, he said. The great juggler got a great round of applause from the audience for the end of the festival.