The libraries I've performed at

Here's a list of the Texas libraries I've performed at:

Austin Public Library, five different branch locations
Bastrop
Bulverde/Spring Branch
Cedar Park
Fredericksburg
Georgetown
Hewitt
Johnson City
Lago Vista
Lockhart
Navasota
Pflugerville
Salado
Tri-Community
Victoria
Wells Branch

Another Bulverde photo

Another post from my Bulverde/Spring library show this summer, taken by a library volunteer.

The Balance and Motion Show

I do a Balance and Motion juggling show that lines up with the Texas Second Grade curriculum, which includes a Balance and Motion FOSS kit.

It's a 30-minute show aimed at demystifying juggling by showing how the physics of balance and motion makes it possible to make props fly through the air.

Bring me to your school, gather your whole second grade in your auditorium or cafeteria, and put a bit of fun in your science.

Here's a quote from some second grade teachers who brought the show to their classrooms:

The Amazing Aaron's "Balance and Motion Juggling Show" created a balanced learning environment, where our kids were able to concretely relate the balance/motion TEKS and vocabulary concepts with an exciting visual dimension. The presentation, itself, was clear and concise yet thorough and valuable. Aaron's positive and genuine attitude connected with the students and made them become almost hypnotized by his performance. I hope that we can get Aaron to come to our school again next year!

 --Adam Turner and Kelly Matlock, 2nd grade teachers at Townsell Elementary, Irving ISD

Opening for a Shakespeare play

I'll be doing an opening act for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a free show in Round Rock. They're playing August 5 through 22; my opener is just on the 22nd. So get there early!

Juggling for the middle school

I juggled at the Murchison Middle School fall festival last night. It was fun. This is the second time I've done this event. Since the majority of my shows have been for elementary-aged kids, it's interesting to see how older kids react.

One big challenge at this event, and events like it, is the noise. I like to do patter, and patter gets destroyed by the background noise at a thing like this, unless you have a microphone, and I don't, yet. I plan to go that route eventually, but right now my act uses no electronics, and it's hard to resist that simplicity: I can show up at a place and open my trunk and get started, with no setup.

The older kids like my material just fine, but they show a much greater interest in trying things out. I spent a lot of time teaching half-juggling and plate spinning.

Show Calendar

Augsust 22, 2010...opening for the Penfold Theatre's Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Grandpa's Trunk show

My "Grandpa's Juggling Trunk" show is an exploration of the props and memories found in "Grandpa's" old trunk, the relic of his world-spanning career as a juggler.

From my beat-up trunk come an assortment of juggling props, each with a story that relates to Grandpa's travels around the world as a juggler.

I start the show by teaching the audience how to be an Amazing Aaron audience...when to count me off, when to applaud, and especially how to shout "That's Amazing" if I should drop something. I mean, you wouldn't want me to get embarrased.

This is silly and works like a charm. I now find that people I hardly know holler "That's Amazing" to me when I run into them on the street.

The prop routines neatly divide the show into chunks, so I can adjust the length of the show by adding or omitting routines. I start with a three-ball routine, and then perform the devil stick, followed by spinning plates and then clubs. Then I may do my Dice Box routine, a four-object juggling set using large rubber dice. Then I do cigar boxes (hey, I've got video of that), some audience participation tricks, and finish with a balance board act...juggling clubs while spinning a plate on a stick in my mouth, all while balancing on a board on a roller.

Each routine is two to three minutes long (the audience particpation takes longer), and the whole is about 30 minutes long.

I'm not currently using any sound amplification or lighting, so I can show up to a site, open the box, and get started right away. Before I get started, I lay out a rope line to let the audience know where they can sit and where they can't.

If you're interested in booking a show, go here.

Boar's Head pageant 1/10, 1/11/09

I found another way to use my renaissance costume this season. I got hired to juggle in the St. Albert the Great church epiphany pageant, called the Boar's Head pageant.

I don't think I've seen an event quite like this before. It' s not a play, precisely -- there's no narrative -- it's mostly about getting groups of people into costumes and having them parade around. This is in the grand tradition of church pageants, historically. But here it's accompanied by singing and music. They had a 25 piece orchestra, which was nice to see.

The pageant enacts the epiphany story, combined with a board's head feast. The costumes were amazing. There were so many people involved that it was a major feat of logistics: there were swiss guards, jesters, nobles, king and queen, the three visiting kings, angels, on and on and on.

The church has been doing this show for six years. Admission is free-but-please-donate.

I didn't think a middle school medieval feast would be a big deal

I didn't expect, when I went down to Hill Country Middle School to perform this morning, that nearly all the kids and a bunch of adults would be set up in elaborate Renaissance costumes.

On the way over there I started to worry, because the impression I'd gotten was that I'd be on a stage in the cafeteria, while the kids were eating, and I thought I was going to be up there alone for a full hour, and that it would be hard to interact with the kids since they'd be eating.

But because it WAS a chaotic cafeteria environment, I instead wandered from table to table, got right in the kids faces, and did my bit. It was a lot of fun.

They even had baskets of french bread on the tables, so I was able to break and juggle the bread, a favorite Madrigal Dinner trick of mine.

I get to use my medieval costume again this year

I had unpacked my renaissance costume for the University of Texas Madrigal Dinner, and was just glorying in the fact that I can still fit into my tights (maybe it's not a feat to fit into spandex, but humor me...).

Madrigal was a ton of fun, especially since last year was the first year I've skipped it in many, many, many, many, too many years -- years which reveal how very long it has been since I was in college. But here I was, looking at my bright green costume which has lasted for so many years (since it only gets used for one week out of the year)...and then a post on the Texas Juggling Society mailing list asked for a juggler to do a middle school renaissance fest.

So that's my Friday thing this week, juggling for some middle school kids while wearing tights. Should be fun.

Video from school show

I did a show for Highland Park elementary last spring, and someone shot some video of it, which is hosted here. I didn't even know about this...I bumped into it while vanity Googling. :)

Getting a show via Craigslist

Someone on the Texas Juggling Society's mailing list posted a job that they found on Craigslist. I followed up with the person and now I'm going to be juggling at a corporate party on 9/15.

It hadn't occurred to me before to keep an eye on Craigslist for things like this, but now I'll be searching it on a regular basis.

Juggled for a big Vacation Bible School program

On June 12 I went and peformed a small piece for the Riverbend church's Vacation Bible School program. The church's VBS program was huge: 840 kids, and the portion I was involved in took place in a giant 3-story auditorium.

The work put into this program was impressive. There was a Nickelodeon-style game-show game, where some of the kids had to attempt to juggle eggs, and when they dropped them, eggs dropped on them from above. And they were gonna drop them. They gave each kid four eggs. :)

The theme was an amusement park, and there was a large motorized ferris wheel, maybe 20' tall, with cardboard seats and riders. And there was another 15' model of an amusment park ride. These were heavily decorated with painted cardboard.

I like to come up with cardboard projects, but these folks put me to shame. Someone told me they used something like 85 9x6-foot pieces of corrugated to do the stage dressing. They had stapled the cardboard to wood frames and painted it all...and the paint job was good.

I shudder to think of how long it would take just to diagram out the complex mural they had for their backdrop. I shudder more to think that it's just going to get torn down after this week is over. :)

There was an impressive amount of creativity in this program, as well as a lot of hard work and some neat engineering. You could tell it really wowed the kids. There was one thing that was super odd about it to my eyes, though: the theme.

All the stories and text were heavily oriented towards the theme of obedience. The script was pretty heavy-handed about this. Now, that's not surprising, I'm sure, in a Vacation Bible School. But it seemed like just the sort of thing that would turn the kids off. Which was odd, because I thought everything else was so well done.

Here's an example: the stage play had three teams of kids. They did an activity where each team had to assemble a puzzle under orders from their leader. The two teams that finished last were told they had "not obeyed quickly enough" and so they had to do the egg juggling activity. I'm sure they loved it. But these highly authoritarian statements made me cringe.

I asked about it, and was told that the script came to them that way. I hadn't thought about it, but I did know that one can purchase bible school programs like these, with scripts and activities prewritten.

Eh, it's probably not much different from what the kids get in school. Am I complaining? Heck no. I want to do more shows like these. I want to see more big flashy carnival-style bible schools. In my mind, each of these should have a juggler on retainer. :)

Juggling for small children

I juggled for my daughter's Mother's Day Out program on Monday, and it got me thinking about juggling for the smaller kids.

Most of my main repertoire is heavily verbal and uses a lot of audience participation and interaction. And I've learned that that's not what goes over well with the smaller kids, the two- to four-year-old set.


I used to think that juggling in general didn't go over all that well with kids that small, actually. But I've learned to tailor my act for the smaller ages. It's not hard. We all have a good time if I:

• Make sure I speak slowly and clearly
• Focus on making everything big, broad, and flashy
• Drop material that that requires participation from the kids
• Use an adult if I absolutely have to have participation
• Avoid teasing and subtlety unless aimed at the adults
• Skip danger-based tricks like knife juggling...they're not really into that
• Change my expectations...small kids take longer to get jokes and they don't see why some of the tricks are difficult.
  

And I thought about these things when I planned for this show...in fact, I'd made some notes about this sort of thing the last time I did a show for kids this small. As a result, the last couple of shows I've done for the wee ones have gone really well...very satisfying for all concerned. Not the least of which was my smallest kid. "You were funny, Daddy!" she said. I could have wished she wasn't so surprised... :)

Balance and Motion show coming up

I'm going to do a Balance and Motion show for my daughter's 2nd grade class. The 2nd grade curriculum includes a unit on Balance and Motion, which is what inspired this show in the first place...my son's teacher asked me to do a piece about this a few years back, and then I took the show to some other schools.

All juggling shows use balance or motion in some fashion, so the props make a fun way to demonstrate some of the principles that the unit covers, like counterbalancing, forces, gravity, spin and roll, and an axis.

Learning to use a devil stick, for example, is all about balance. You allow the stick to fall to one side of the control stick, then tap it above the centerline to throw it to the other stick. You start a propellor trick by catching it below the centerline and following it as it rotates.

Blue & Gold Banquet

I'm juggling for the Pack 90 cub scouts this February 28, at their Blue & Gold Banquet.

Benefit show coming

Looks like I'll probably do a benefit show in February, opening for Joe McDermott, who has a musical act for kids and who lives in our neighborhood. Maybe. Nothing confirmed yet. Pretty exciting, though. Joe's audiences are always great.

I don't do a lot of benefit shows. I'd rather be paid, generally speaking. But this one's for my kids' school trip. I also do the school's fall festival every year. And if you've never been to a Joe McDermott show...well, you should go. He's a lot of fun. Everyone in our family sings his songs. He typically mixes a variety of musical styles into his albums, so there's a lot of musical and lyrical interest for adults as well as kids.

Spinning plates at a wedding

Well, things at the wedding weren't quite what I expected. It was outdoors and there was a lot of wind...not ideal conditions for my act, which depends heavily on verbal patter. And most of the time it didn't seem appropriate to start up any juggling. But during a lull in the reception, I did get some items out, especially the spinning plates. My son Ethan actually started us off with some plate spinning; he's getting good at it. I was able to let several kids try it out, and do a few tricks myself, before we all went inside for the toasts.

I expect I'll get a wireless microphone set at some point. It's nice to not worry about speakers and wires and sound systems, but it's limiting in a lot of venues. It's nearly impossible to be heard in a windy outdoor environment without amplification.

Doing a seminar/show at the Georgetown library this Thursday, July 12

I have a show this Thursday, 2 pm., at the Georgetown library in Georgetown, TX just north of Austin. The show is free and open to the public, courtesy of the library. After a half-hour juggling show, I'll be hosting a 45 minute juggling seminar. The show is aimed at ages 7 and up.

Cedar Park library: two shows this Thursday 6/28/07

June 28, 2007
Cedar Park Libary, 2pm and 3:15. Free to the public.

Cedar Park Public Library
550 Discovery Blvd.
Cedar Park, Texas 78613