Tossing Of the Old Routine
Brian Dailey is part of a new breed of jugglers -- guys who see their work as high art
By Caleb Hannan
Brian P. Dailey is nervous. The 27-year-old unemployed juggler is standing on a makeshift stage at a friend’s dance studio, waiting for his musical cue. He’s here tonight to perform an original juggling routine for an audience of his peers, most of whom, he assumes, are drunk.
Dailey holds three juggling clubs in one hand, wiping the other down his pant leg to rub off the accumulated sweat. His fingertips nearly reach his kneecap on account of his long arms, a feature exaggerated by a rail-thin figure. It’s a physique that makes him look taller than 5-feet-10', but tonight it’s a wash since Dailey’s performing barefoot.
The music starts and a man in the audience blurts out a half-giggled “Y-Y-Yes!” Dailey’s soundtrack, a Neil Diamond-Dolly Parton duet of You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, sounds like an ironic choice but that wasn’t his intention. Dailey wanted to sincerely portray the complex emotions that result from a break-up. To him the song is sad and earnest and, as an added bonus, he found a version from two of his favorite singers.
Dailey’s routine resembles the improv game Sitting, Standing, Lying. Along with juggling in a more traditional way, he moves his three clubs from his hands to his head to his shoulder to his chin just like the three improv comics simultaneously sit, stand, and lie down. The routine also has its share of fits and starts, mimicking the down-tempo verses that build to produce a finale worthy of the Righteous Brothers.
As Diamond half-whispers his line “baby, baby, I get down on my knees and pray to you,” Dailey balances a club on his shortly cropped hair and lets it stay there long enough to elicit nervous laughter from the crowd. Dailey will later admit that the pause wasn’t intentional; he was trying to psyche himself up for his next move and was having doubts since he’d already dropped three clubs. But the laughter didn’t bother him.
“I think if people laugh that’s great,” he says. “If different people laugh and cry at the same show, that’s cool. If it’s the same person (laughing and crying), that’d be completely awesome.”
Dailey’s routine - which he calls Loving Feeling - is representative of the newest incarnation of juggling. Firmly rooted in the world of entertainment and recently cast as an entrant in the realm of sport, Dailey is one of a handful of jugglers trying to push their passion into a new arena: juggling as art.
***
At a Tuesday night meeting of the Chicago Juggling Club, the half-dozen or so hobbyists throw and drop, three, four, and sometimes five props. Dailey, gaunt and unshaven in the middle of the room, is practicing “wrist-traps.”
He traps a club by clamping it between the handle of the club he’s holding and his wrist, so that the two clubs form a right angle. At a recent juggling conference, one of Dailey’s idols showed him the correct way to do wrist-traps. The impromptu lesson only encouraged Dailey to continue using his own method because, as he says, he’s more interested in being “slow and awkward” than technically accurate.
"There are rules," says Dailey, sneering. "You're supposed to care about the audience."
Bill Gushwan, the club's organizer, says it's moves like the wrist-trap that make Dailey unique. "I like juggling, I really like it," says Gushwan. "But what (Dailey's) doing is just...interesting."
Dailey sits to take a break and drink from a large bottle of apple soda twice as wide as his forearm. He slumps forward in his chair and props his head on his hand, tapping his toes back and forth, giving the impression of an animal caught in a steel trap. He rakes his nails across his scalp while talking to Guschwan about their favorite jugglers. There's Mark Faje (pronounced “Fay”), a Chicago native who apparently spent last summer passed out on Dailey's couch.
“(Faje’s) the one who balances a lawnmower on his chin and juggles cabbage,” says Guschwan, nodding as if he’s just said something everyone already knows. Dailey nods too.
"But who's your favorite?" presses Guschwan.
"Gilligan.", says Dailey.
“Jay Gilligan?”, says Guschwan, throwing his hands in the air in mock contempt. “He’s so pretentious!”
Guschwan then does his Gilligan impression. Frowning, he pretends to juggle three balls, drops them, and walks away. Dailey looks down and nods, smiling.
Dailey understands why some people in the juggling community find Gilligan's acts (which Dailey describes as "playful and conceptual; written like a post-modern dance piece") pretentious. "Most variety artists in the U.S. are treated as beggars because they are," writes Dailey. "Many American entertainers beg for accolade. (Gilligan) doesn't, which lots of people find arrogant in that context of pandering. He views juggling as an art."
