A small but eager group of kids got a crash course in juggling last week at the Winkler Centennial Library
The South Central Regional Library branch welcomed Eric the Juggler (a.k.a. Eric Miller) to town for an evening workshop on the finer points of the art.
Miller, a teacher by trade, spends his summers travelling Canada performing at community festivals.
“I live in Burns Lake, British Columbia and I have family in Thunder Bay, Ontario and I tour everywhere in between in the summer,” he says, noting he’s no stranger to southern Manitoba, having performed at Winkler’s Canada Day festivities earlier this month and at the Harvest Festival last year.
He found himself in Winkler again for a few days last week due car trouble, and reached out to see if the library was keen to host one of his workshops while he was here.
Just about anyone can learn the basics of juggling, if they’re willing to put in the effort, Miller says.
“I could get you juggling scarves in about five minutes.”
Using scarves is one way to get the movements down, though at a much slower speed than juggling balls.
“It really depends on the crowd,” Miller says on how fast participants can advance from scarves to other objects. “I’m pretty good at sizing a kid up in terms of what they can handle and also their level of tenacity.
“With scarves, you get the motions down and you get the success, but the speed is all wrong,” he says. “But then with beanbags or something, they move a lot faster.”
The trick, Miller says, is getting kids to steadily hone their skills without getting too frustrated too early on.
Miller has been juggling since he was a teen, learning it from his older siblings. He’s worked his way up to juggling knives, chainsaws, and even flaming torches, sometimes while standing on a balance board.
He shared a bit of his act with the kids in the workshop, much to their delight, before getting them practising tossing coloured scarves in the air themselves.
Photo by Ashleigh Viveiros/Voice
