Challenging and fun sport
If you’re looking for a sport that’s creative, unique and a great confidence booster, you may want to give juggling a try. The ability to keep several objects continuously moving from the hands into the air may sound like an overwhelming challenge, but that’s all part of the fun. Just ask Sandpoint entertainer Ellen Weissman, who shares a split personality as Durga the Clown and Sutari the Juggler.
“I started juggling in 1983 after years of being fascinated by it,” Weissman said. “I had started clowning and was also beginning my research on the healing power of laughter and play. I went to several conferences where Steve Allen Jr. taught scarf-juggling. He said that if everyone knew how to juggle, we’d have world peace. … I knew I was hooked.”
Many sports, such as bowling, baseball and football, rely on one dominant arm. But juggling is different in that it demands equal use of both sides of the brain and body.
“It looks hard and confusing,” Weissman said. “But it’s really not that difficult. It’s exciting to see someone catch on after they declare they could never get it.”
It’s the pleasure of juggling with others and making a social connection that led Weissman to create the Sandpoint Juggling Club in 1996.
“I met QZ Allard, who is a juggler and stilt-walker with her character, Delilah, and we wanted to juggle together on a regular basis,” Weissman said. “We started meeting weekly at City Beach and taught for a while at Sandpoint West Athletic Club. The word spread, and people started to show up. At the beach, folks would stop by and watch and then join us.”
Later the group was joined by the Gentle Giants – Jesse and Drew Leiser, stilt-walkers from the Festival at Sandpoint – and the club really took off. Recently, Sutari the Juggler and the Gentle Giants performed together at the Panida Theater.
“It was a blast,” Weissman said.
Lately, due to time restraints and busy schedules, the club has become dormant, but there are plans to change that.
“I’d love to see it get going again,” said Weissman, who recently taught a basic juggling class to an enthused group of fourth- and fifth-graders at Sandpoint’s Waldorf School. The group included 11-year-old Maya Goldblum and 9-year-old Ruby Summerday – both amateur jugglers – who enjoyed showing off their skills.
“It’s pretty easy,” Summerday said. “But it makes you have to focus.”
“Juggling (as a group) is so much fun,” added Weissman. “There is a wide range of skills and we all learn from each other. There’s always someone willing to teach newbies, and someone always knows something someone else doesn’t. Passing (when two or more jugglers toss balls back and forth) is the best, because you can get into that ‘zone’ feeling when everyone is focused and getting the tosses and catches. And there’s no judgment when someone drops. We just pick the balls and clubs back up and keep going.”
Opportunities abound for those who get really good at juggling.
“I have friends who make a living with their juggling as performers,” Weissman said. “Or teaching in school programs, or as entertainers in care centers and hospitals. The possibilities are endless.”
More than just fun and exercise, juggling also plays an important role in therapy. With this in mind, Weissman facilitates workshops in laughter and play that offer magical clowning as well as “clownseling.” One such workshop, created with the help of friend and yoga teacher, Debbie Dippre, is titled “Joga and Yuggling, Ways to Relieve Stress,” and was presented at last year’s Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor conference.
If you’d like to see Weissman in action, a great place to meet her is at the annual Festival at Sandpoint Children’s Concert, where she runs a booth and demonstrates how to make juggling balls from balloons, plastic baggies and rice.
“One year a little girl came up to me when I was packing up my booth,” Weissman recalled. “She was so cute, but I’d run out of rice. She looked up at me with her big brown eyes and was so sad. I lifted my lace tablecloth and underneath was just enough rice to make one more ball. She was so delighted.”