Arts & Entertainment

World Juggling Day Celebrated Saturday

Local groups gather to have fun, perfect their craft.

Did you know that Saturday, June 18th is World Juggling Day? Fairfax County resident Peyton Walker fell into juggling more than 20 years ago after his wife gave him a juggling kit--juggling balls that are more like beanbags--as a gag gift for Christmas.

The Fairfax Station resident decided to give the gag gift a go. "I started doing it, and I had never seen a lot of jugglers, so I started out juggling by a book, and I didn’t get very far," he said in an interview with Patch on Friday.

Peyton Walker (known to his juggling friends as "Pete") decided to start a club. "I called another guy and I said 'Why don’t we start a juggling club?"

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So the Fairfax Jugglers was born. Today the group is made up of both men and women of all ages.  "We're about 75 percent guys," Walker said. "We're all ages. We're represented from oh say, I don’t know, 10 year-olds who are masters already, to 15, 20. The majority are 20-something, 30-something. Primarily professional." Walker is retired from the civilian Navy.

The group meets each Thursday night at Key Intermediate School in Springfield to "swap tricks" as they call it. They juggle different things, starting out with juggling balls. "They’re actually bean bags," said Walker. "They're specially formed, a little harder and heavier than ordinary bean bags, they stay put when they hit the floor."

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At its very first meeting, the Fairfax Jugglers club met at a tennis court in Vienna, and moved inside during the winter, into a school cafeteria. "And we’ve been in schools around Fairfax ever since then," Walker noted.

The membership list "is probably 20 or 30," he said, but not all of them attend every week. "A typical turnout is 10 to 15 people."

Can anyone get good at juggling? "There’s 'a stick-to-itiveness' that is pretty essential," Walker said. "With some eye-hand coordination and practice, about anybody can do it."

The Fairfax Jugglers have juggled it all: Balls, clubs, knives ("blunted and scimitar-shaped, but they’re still iron"), and even fire sticks. "Yeah it’s got fire on the end," Walker said. "Something like kerosene." The more dangerous items are juggled outdoors.

The clubs are also called pins by some jugglers. "They’re lighter weight and if they hit you in the head, they won’t blind you," Walker said. "They’re made primarily out of plastic, with a wooden core."

There’s all sorts of levels of skill, Walker said. "Some can do nine balls, some can do seven clubs. There’s one guy, and you read about him a lot, juggling five balls while running a marathon. He juggles and runs at the same time."

Walker sees juggling "as a fun hobby, it really is. Once you learn, it’s like riding a bicycle."

Although Fairfax Jugglers had no formal plans to mark World Juggling Day, Incredible Flying Objectsin Winchester, Va., planned to hold demonstrations Saturday. Call (540) 678-9993 for details.  


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