159 - The Paradoxes of Juggling - Michael Staroseletsky & Niels Duinker Publishing

In this episode I read the first chapter of the Paradoxes of Juggling by Michael Staroseletsky, a book published by NDjuggling.com which of course is run by Niels Duinker who was a guest on the podcast back in episode 135. If you are interested in ways to view the world through a craft this is a book you should check out. If you're interested in advanced practice and the technique of juggling this is a great read. It is also part of the brand new Compendium of Soviet Juggling Wisdom.

What if a juggling act is more than patterns in the air—what if it’s a blueprint for freedom, identity, and the courage to keep going when you drop? We dive into a lyrical reading from Michael Staroseletsky’s The Paradoxes of Juggling and unpack why this art form refuses shortcuts and demands honesty. From the first image of balls moving like “living creatures” to the stubborn physics of clubs that won’t always obey, we sit with the tension between intention and reality and show how mastery grows inside that friction.

Staroseletsky’s core claim is perhaps that the trick is both the vehicle and the destination. Juggling isn’t just technique polished to shine; it’s an inner practice that widens your tolerance for error and refines your timing until correction feels effortless. We explore the paradox that to juggle more, you must accept more—more variables, more variance, and more responsibility for recovery.

We also talk about persona and truth onstage. Circus artists often “play themselves,” so the work only lands when the human behind the pattern is vivid and honest. Props aren’t passive; the moment an object leaves your hand, it asserts its own will, and the act becomes a dialogue you can see—rhythm as visible music, choreography in space, and story told through catches and drops.

If Staroseletsky’s vision resonates, you’ll find the book at ndjuggling.com alongside other gems for artists, jugglers, and curious minds. Listen, reflect, and tell us what craft is teaching you about time, space, and self. If this episode sparked something, follow the Way, even better - share it with a friend, and leave a review so more curious listeners can discover it.

Chapters

• 0:11 Setting The Stage And Context
• 1:25 Introducing The Paradoxes Of Juggling
• 2:40 The Poet Of The Circus
• 3:50 Reading: The Juggler’s Living Universe
• 6:05 Clubs, Falls, And Humility
• 8:20 What Is Juggling Really
• 10:20 Freedom Through Accuracy And Error
• 12:05 The Trick As Means And End
• 14:00 Identity, Props, And Conflict
• 16:10 Rhythm, Visible Music, Fragile Worlds
• 18:10 Defying The Impossible And Encouragement
• 20:30 Truth, Limits, And The Long Path
• 22:10 Finding Your Own Juggling Voice

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to The Way of the Showman, where we as always view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo, and I will be your host and your guide along the way. And today I am going to do something that we have yet to do in the 150 or so episodes that we have done since we started. This is new. I will be reading from a book not written by myself. Those of you who are faithful listeners might remember that in episode 135 I spoke with the juggler Niels Duncker. We had a great conversation about all the different things that he did and does in relation to juggling, because he doesn't just perform juggling, he also has a passion for juggling in all its many forms, and one of the things that he does is to publish books. And one of those books is called The Paradoxes of Juggling. It's written by the author Michael Staroseletsky. And the book was originally published in 1993 in Russian. And this translation has been done by Michael Starosoletsky and Niels Junker. So I want to talk to him more about that. Does Niels Djunker in fact speak Russian? What's going on here? That I don't know the answer to. But the first chapter of this book, The Parf in The Paradoxes of Juggling, is a very poetic chapter, even though the rest of the book has uh really uh takes the techniques of juggling very seriously and is of interest to anyone who is uh wanting to get serious about juggling. But this first chapter was so poetic that it made me uh um yeah, it resonated with me in many of the themes that I have already spoken about here along the way. So I asked him, can I read uh this chapter aloud? So that is what we're going to do here today. We're going to be hearing from the chapter one of Michael Staroseletsky's book, The Paradoxes of Juggling. This book you can get, go to ndjuggling.com and you can find in the book section there, you can find this book along with a whole lot of other books. So let's uh jump into the poetic beginning of The Paradoxes of Juggling. So um, before just I start reading, I just thought I'd mention that Michael uh Staroseletsky was a performer and and he published his book in 1993. And in the prologue to the book, he says he published the book, and that same year, at the age of 41, he was accepted into the professional circus of the Republic of Kazakhstan. And they traveled around and did shows uh uh around in countries of the former USSR and China and Iran and all this. But it uh struck me there that uh maybe he would have uh at some point shared the stage with uh Anchapoda, which we just a couple of episodes ago, we uh got to uh hear some of her incredible uh stories from behind the Iron Curtain. And in the prologue, he also mentions that uh he actually performed in Grenoble at the European uh juggling festival. And although I couldn't uh remember his name, I was actually at that juggling festival in 1999. So uh I might actually have seen some of these uh things, even though at the time I didn't get to meet him in person. So, anyway, let's uh jump into what this book has to offer from chapter one. And uh yeah, I recommend reading the whole thing, but uh this might whet your appetite. It starts Who has not seen a juggler in the circus tossing several objects? Simple rubber balls flash in his deft hands and spun. They are flying in front of him along strict classical parabolas. Now, with barely noticeable movements, the artist begins to bounce them off from his elbows, forearm, and shoulder. Here they are, carefully replacing each other, rolling over his hands and head, falling on his neck, then rolling down his back or conversely, flying vertically upwards. Then the balls jump out from under the feet of the juggler and then suddenly hide behind his back. He throws his body far back one more second, making it almost parallel to the floor and throws balls over him. Everything happens, as if the balls are not balls but living, intelligent creatures performing their bizarre dance before our eyes. Yes. The juggler breathed life into them, invested his skill and placed the rhythm of his soul into them, and thus created his universe. A world he easily and naturally controls. But what happens next? The number of objects increases and now a whole fountain of balls is rapidly soaring up. Spectator, please do not applaud the juggler now. In these ten seconds do not distract his attention from the man made universe in front of you. Perhaps this is what he has been striving for over many years. The balls are replaced by juggling clubs, sparkling in the light of the spotlights. They rotate and do numerous flips in the flight. Sometimes they jump madly, cutting through space and scattering silver sparks around them, and then suddenly freeze for a moment in the air. Then they smoothly descend into the hands of the master waiting for them, and whom they obey for the most part. Sometimes they show their capricious character and fly off to the sides or even fall to the ground. The objects seem to want to tell the juggler, please calm your pride. Although you are a master, you are not a god, but a mere mortal. But the juggler will not calm his pride any time soon. It takes a long time before his passionate desire for the impossible will be replaced by the soothing harmony between him and the world he creates. But even then, in the depths of his soul, he will not be able to accept that his possibilities are not unlimited. So, what is juggling? What is its nature? And what are its distinctive features? What are the methods of forming the necessary motor skills and coordination in juggling? The answers to these and some other questions are the contents of this book. Juggling is in many ways an art. It is one of the very peculiar artistic ways of reflecting and cognizing reality. The juggler is actively trying to get to know the world around him and himself in it. To do this, he creates his world a reflection and simultaneously part of a larger universe created by God or in some other way, but this little world of a juggler in his life, passion and destiny. At the end of this book, it is said that juggling is the differentiation and mastering of time and space, but it is also the differentiation and mastering of oneself. Juggling is a fantastic process of self-discovery and self-immersion. That is immersion in oneself, in one's thoughts and feelings. The juggler strives to know himself. Prompted by the need to master new, more complex motor skills, developing these skills is in most cases only possible due to further improvement of one's movement accuracy. The problem is directly related to an increase in musculoskeletal and articular sensitivity. Thus, each juggling trick that is more complex than its previous one corresponds to a specific, adequate level of introspection and self-improvement. The demonstration of such tricks is also a demonstration of the juggler's ability to introspect and self-improve. On the one hand, the problem of increasing the accuracy is connected with the problem of expanding the range of permissible freedoms or the range of allowable errors. To increase the number of objects, the juggler must significantly broaden his range of permissible freedoms. That is, to learn to correct his mistakes without interrupting the juggling when juggling fewer objects. The primary way to expand the range is to master many variations in height, tempo, and spacing of the same pattern, but with fewer objects. Therefore, to improve the accuracy of throws, it is necessary to expand a range of permissible errors within the lower version of that trick before moving up. And on the other hand, by increasing the accuracy of movement, the throwing accuracy, increasing the discriminative abilities of his analysis, and general by educating him in movement and culture. The juggler thereby expands his range. That is, he acquires a more considerable margin of safety and freedom. Thus, one of the fundamental laws of dialectics, the law of unity and struggle of oppositions, is manifested in our art. The juggler expresses with his creativity the eternal human desire for freedom, which is not given by someone from above but is won through a painful and prolonged struggle. The juggler wins every inch of this freedom through a complex dramatic struggle. A performer in a circus creates an artistic image using the tricks he managed to learn. However, many art critics simultaneously argue that a trick is a means to create an artistic image, and one can hardly agree with such a statement. A circus trick is equally a means and an end. This is the main distinguishing feature of circus arts and the uniqueness of it. That is also part of its attractive power. We can agree that a circus artist should play, but unlike a theatrical actor who creates images of other people, the circus artist is usually doomed to play themselves. For this game to be attractive and capture the viewer, the artist must be an exciting, unique and inimitable person. Otherwise he will forever remain for the viewer a thing in itself, a machine of unknown design that simply tosses and catches objects. Creating an artistic image, the juggler sooner or later will ask himself a question Who am I? Good or evil? Smart or not so bright? Handsome or ugly? Why am I going on stage? What do I want to tell the audience? Here we again come to the problem of introspection and self improvement. But if in the first case the juggler differentiates and recognizes his physical essence, then in this case he encounters his spiritual essence. So you ask, does the same thing happen in other genres and art in general? Yes. But in other types of arts, a musician's violin, a tightrope walker's rope, a gymnast's gymnastic bar, etc do not take part in this chemical reaction, but are, as it were, its catalyst, a component directing its flow. Then in juggling the juggler's props, the balls, clubs, rings, etc, are an active component of this chemical reaction. What does this activity consist of? The fact is that the object from the moment it is separated from the juggler's hand ceases to obey his will. On the contrary, the juggler is forced to submit to the will of the object, to adapt to the nature of its movement. The trajectory of the object depends on the throw of the juggler, but since no person is capable of making ideal, mathematically precise movements that causes the conflict between the juggler and the objects. It is inevitable and takes on a beautiful, lively, dramatic colouring. This fact, in the art of juggling, manifests itself with particular sharpness. The juggling image, therefore, is born as a result of the dynamic interaction of the artist's personality with his props. And it's here, in this conflict that man's interaction with the endless struggle with himself, with his weaknesses and passions is reflected. Juggling is one of the artistic ways of reflecting reality, but reflection is not a mirror. It's reflected through the artist's soul, through his understanding of this reality. The world of the juggler may reflect our huge world which is being juggled by someone or something inaccessible to our knowledge. The art of juggling is dynamic and intense. Consider the rhythmic organization of the juggling act. I have written about rhythmic drawings since I imagine juggling as a painting. Juggling is also visible music, and simultaneously its choreography through a dance of objects. In juggling, all these three types of arts are wonderfully combined into one whole and it is synthesized. The world of a juggler is fragile. Unfortunately he drops, but the world around us is also fragile, isn't it? Generally, art reflects the world. Circus art does not just reflect or display the world, it challenges it. Our consciousness that guides us in everyday life tells us that this exercise is impossible to master and unthinkable. That may be what the juggler answers. Then he not only masters it, but often shows it easily and naturally. The juggler refutes ordinary consciousness. He laughs at it, yet his laughter is not evil but cheerful and good natured. You think, he tells the viewer, that you can't keep up with two balls at once, but I now go after three, four, five of them, and I don't just catch them, but I do it in various ways. Yes, I too have breakdowns, but my dear viewer, you also have failures and don't manage to do everything in your life, but please note, despite the blockages, I still bring my act to its logical conclusion, and these challenges do not throw me out of balance. So my dear audience, don't give up when it's hard for you. When you seem to be losing and challenges happen in your life. Hopefully the audience thinks, since this juggler can do such unusual things and keeps it all going, then I'm capable of that too. The juggler brings joy to the viewer. He gives the audience a better energy boost than any psychic and inspires faith in his strength. Yes, the art of circus is a joyful, cheerful art. But one day on TV I saw the performance of the famous Soviet juggler Evgeny Bilyauer, who showed his unique combination of clubs and a ball. His act held my attention. He continuously bounced the ball with his head as he tried to balance a club on his chin, and he managed to make several bounces of the ball whilst in this position. Some jugglers tend to do such a combination only for a bit, but it is near impossible to perform this particular combination for a long time, and Evgen Ibel Yar showed it as a joke, and in this joke I suddenly felt the existential longing of a person about his imperfection and desire to go after the impossible. A person, for example, will never be able to fly like a bird as he will not learn to juggle, for instance, twenty rings at once, etc. Yet the juggler dreams about and strives for the impossible. One can't know the absolute truth. One can only go after it step by step. It is impossible to comprehend the harmony of the world. You can only lightly touch it. This striving for absolute truth to connect to the harmony of the world illuminates the artists, makes them spiritualized, and does not leave the viewer indifferent. In juggling there is no faking it. It is very truthful. Easy and quick success is impossible here. It is impossible to deceive the viewer by merely saying I can juggle six clubs. If the artist has not mastered this, he will not be able to perform it under any of the most favorable conditions, on the other hand, nor at gunpoint. To master a move or a number, the juggler must go through a long, difficult path with many obstacles. And it may happen that his whole life will pass, but he will not overcome all obstacles. What is the reason? Probably the juggler needed to devote more time to his training, or he missed some tiny but important detail. He did not develop enough ability to introspect to this painstaking, exhausting soul and body the work of sorting himself out. Or did the juggler choose the wrong direction altogether? After all, juggling is a whole world. No single person could learn to perform all today's tricks related to this art, and juggling gives the performer ample opportunities for self-expression. All possible tricks in our art allow the capable and hard working artist to create a bright and artistic image close to his character. Rudy Schweitzer never needed to throw ten balls, since three were enough for him, and the passion with which he performed his tricks and his excellent acting could be the envy of many jugglers who juggle many more objects. Finding yourself in your art, staying aware of the pack, keeping your creativity and mostly conveying your understanding of the chosen genre to the viewer are complex tasks that take many years of creative and painstaking work. Alright. As I was reading that it's uh probably clear to you um why it speaks to me. This kind of uh highfalutin metaphorical thinking is exactly what I engage in and what I talk a lot in those kinds of terms on uh on this podcast. And uh I love this. I love to look at something uh that looks uh simple and frivolous on one level, but through the enactment of learning this discipline of juggling, which obviously not to any extent like what uh Mr. Starosoletsky uh uh does in his very technical expertise, I still dedicated myself to juggling for years. Juggled and juggled and set myself uh uh uh goals to uh when I was uh had to juggle five balls every day, and I had to break my record, even if it was just by five throws. So I'm juggling five balls and I was counting, and I out of the five balls that I juggled, I placed um I collared one of the balls differently because I'd bought them and they were all the same colours. So I used a pen to collar it so that I could count that each time it returned to the hand, it was a certain number of throws, and I counted that one and I counted the throws. So I know this obsession with improving one's skills. Um and I also I I love, of course, um I love the idea that we are working on a skill, we're mastering a craft, technical or whatever, but we're also working on ourselves and to overcome these obstacles uh on working on improving our inner and our outer expressions, and through this we can become better performers and ultimately better human beings. I love to see the craft of performance and the craft of juggling in this case, but the craft of showmanship as being a uh a picture of um a craft that is uh also being used to improve ourselves, to become moral and thinking and feeling human beings in the world. So um if you like this uh book, then I recommend buying it. It's always uh, you know, if you are one of the people out there who do like to read and likes to have an object like a paper book. The book is uh beautifully printed, it's got a cool cover on it, and uh um Niels Duncker has done a great job. And and uh there were aspects of this uh this first chapter that reminded me a little bit of uh Dave Finnegan's The Zen of Juggling. Although the content of the book is totally different. The Zen of Juggling was when I read it uh back in um the ancient time and the latter half of the previous millennium. Uh it was uh a book that you know took maybe tongue in cheek, but it still took juggling seriously uh in a way that uh spoke to me. And um uh coincidentally or otherwise, um uh you can also buy um the Zen of Juggling from uh Niels Duncker's uh online store. So um uh yeah, this hasn't been uh paid for. It's uh just uh brought to you by me um to show you what exists out there. There are so many awesome books uh uh not just by Niels Duncker but out in the world um that uh that I draw on to uh inspire me in uh in thinking about the craft of showmanship. So uh I hope this gave you something, gave you some food for thought. So uh until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.