Motion and Commotion

The New York Times

SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 1999

MOTION AND COMMOTION:

THE JUGGLER’S ART, FROM TWO VERY DIFFERENT PRACTITIONERS

By CINDY MARVELL

EXPERIMENT: hold a ball out in front of you at arm‘s length. Drop it. Now, try to catch it with the same hand before it hits the floor.

If you anticipate the forces of gravity swiftly enough to catch the ball, you are a good candidate to see Michael Moschen in ”On the Shoulders of . . .‘‘ at the McCarter Theater next week. If, on the other hand, you miss the ball but devise a clever song about it that makes your friends laugh hysterically, grab your kazoo and head for the Flying Karamazov Brothers’ presentation of ”Sharps, Flats and Accidentals.‘‘

Though legendary as jugglers, the two companies have come to symbolize the splits — acrobatic and philosophical — in the field of ”new vaudeville‘‘ since its rise in the late 1960‘s and early 70‘s, when Mr. Moschen first encountered the Karamazovs at a jugglers’ get-together in San Francisco. He remembers passing clubs with Tim Furst, the silent Karamazov, after discovering that they lived in the same apartment house a few blocks from Haight-Ashbury.

”We‘re the greatest opposites you could find,‘‘ Mr. Moschen said in a telephone interview last week from his present base in Cornwall, Conn., ”but there are two major differences between us: they have longer beards, and I‘m a recluse.‘‘

Their itineraries read like a novel titled ”East Meets West.‘‘ Mr. Moschen grew up in Greenfield, Mass., the small town where, as a teen-ager, he entered an unlikely collaboration with his schoolmate Penn Jillette (juggling spitballs?). The four, sometimes five, Karamazovs, some of whom met as students of perpetual motion at the University of Santa Cruz in California, now reside in Seattle (their original farmhouse-studio-theater in Port Townsend, Wash., has become a bed-and-breakfast) and Hawaii, where they are currently performing and visiting their hippie abode at a jugglers‘ commune in Maui. They have just completed a tour in the Netherlands and Berlin.

Even those unfamiliar with ”new vaudeville‘‘ have probably seen both acts on the screen. The Karamazovs appeared alongside Avner the Eccentric in ”The Jewel of the Nile‘‘ in roles ranging from the pivotal (a knife-wielding assassin) to the percussive (culinary cacophony with pots and pans) to the perilous (juggling, eating and walking on fire). Rock-and-roll fans may be shocked to learn that Mr. Moschen did the juggling for David Bowie in the film ”Labyrinth”; he also juggled torches in ”Annie.‘‘ Both have made PBS specials.

The Karamazovs’ productions have titles like ”Juggling and Cheap Theatrics,‘‘ their immensely popular, Obie Award-winning show, or ”Juggle and Hyde,‘‘ for which they were nominated for an Olivier Award after a London run. Mr. Moschen‘s pieces have titles like ”Light,‘‘ ”S-Curve Dances,‘‘ ”Sticks‘‘ and ”Vectors.”

Mr. Furst began his Russian odyssey as the Karamazovs’ technician after graduating from Stanford University, running lights and sound and building props for the founding members, Paul Magid (Dmitri) and Howard Patterson (Ivan). The first time he joined the brotherhood onstage, it was only for one act: after materializing from the light booth, he ran through some passing patterns with silent dignity, then disappeared into the background. The trio received many compliments on the virtues of silence, and Fyodor was born.

Having found names in the Dostoyevsky novel (Rakatin, played by Michael Preston, will be the fourth Karamazov at the McCarter), the troupe had trouble finding audiences sophisticated enough to comprehend its jokes. Still, its popularity grew, fueled by intricate ensemble juggling and delightful groaners.

Back in the 60‘s they were performing at outdoor events like the Oregon Country Fair in Eugene. ”It was a lot harder to get booked then,‘‘ Mr. Furst recalled. ”Juggling, to most people, meant circus and children‘s shows.‘‘

Once they took the stage at the Goodman Theater in Chicago with their own rendition of Shakespeare‘s ”Comedy of Errors,‘‘ they never relinquished it. When the show repeated its sold-out run at Lincoln Center Theater in New York, nobody could deny that vaudeville was making a comeback, big time.

“If juggling is rhythm and rhythm is music, then juggling is music,‘‘ Mr. Patterson says. The Karamazovs play their own music, whether as a traditional chamber orchestra (if you consider Peter Schickele traditional) or when juggling marimba mallets or clubs with sleigh bells fastened on (particularly effective for renditions of the ”Mission Impossible‘‘ theme in the key of C, for chaos). Mr. Moschen performs to experimental instrumental music by David Van Tieghem, with choreography by Janis Brenner.

Mr. Moschen has always been in a class by himself. Other jugglers make objects agitate; he makes them levitate. Hoops, sticks, even a tetrahedron appear to float through his fingers and above his undulating, open hands. ”I made a rule that I would never close my hands around the object, and this led me to a new technique,‘‘ he said in 1992 at the International Jugglers’ Convention in Montreal.

In the early 80‘s, he was performing a lighthearted three-ball routine and spectacular fire-swinging finale as an original cast member of the Big Apple Circus. Seeking simplicity and isolation, he withdrew to a rustic studio in Vermont, far from the circus crowds. There, he laid down the law and kept his hands open, learning to slide them under, over and around a set of crystal balls purchased at a drugstore.

It was ”the first time my instincts kicked in and drove me to create a whole new technique,‘‘ he said. ”It was my first powerful creation experience.‘‘ When he caught a crystal ball on his forehead and balanced it as he knelt down and stretched out on his back, gazing intently at the sphere amid an invisible field of dreams, he took juggling into a new dimension.

If there is one old-vaudeville performer with a broad enough talent and scope to have influenced both, it was Bobby May, the consummate American juggler from Cleveland, a pioneer of the technique known as head rolls, in which balls roll around a juggler‘s head, chin and neck. In his arm-stretching three-ball routines and leg-lunging club acts he might have been the first juggler to combine modern forms of dance and movement with inventive technical juggling. He also had musical leanings, bouncing five balls off a drum while standing on his head and playing “Yankee Doodle‘‘ on the harmonica. Although Mr. Moschen cites May, who died in 1981, and the former Ringling and Big Apple Circus juggler Francis Brunn as his inspirations, he has largely been left to find his own path.