European Juggling Convention, Lublin (29 July – 6 August 2023)

From 29 July through 6 August we were at the European Juggling Convention in Lublin, Poland. The EJC is the world’s largest gathering of jugglers and other circus folks, typically drawing between 2000 and 5000 participants depending on the location and other factors.

The 2023 EJC was originally to have been held in Caen, France. But, in the spring of 2022 the organizing team reported that they’d been unable to secure a permit from the city. The Irish team, who had also put in a bid for 2023, offered to step up. We know some of the team members (Des, Blú, and Dee) and were confident they’d be able to put on an excellent convention. However, after having two potential locations fall through on them, and then securing a third, they were unable to get insurance due to an ongoing crisis in the Irish insurance industry. (They were in good company: many events had to be cancelled in Ireland this year due to insurance issues, including a Beyoncé concert. Probably the only time Beyoncé and juggling will ever be mentioned in the same headline!)

So, with less than 100 days left to the planned convention dates, the European Juggling Association approached the team in Lublin, Poland, who had organized the 2012 and 2017 EJCs. Against all odds and with the help of Team Ireland and enthusiastic support from the City of Lublin and the regional government, they managed to pull off a terrific convention.

Let’s start with a short tour of (parts of) the site.

“the entrance hall to the EJC” — The entrance to the convention centre was home to registration, the information point, the workshop boards just visible on the far left, and the volunteer coordination centre. The traders area (vendors of juggling supplies and related items) was on the floor immediately above, and open for about four hours every day.

“the juggling hall” — The main feature of any EJC is the juggling hall. Lublin has one of the best: an extremely large, well-lit, high-ceiling space that’s just ideal. The organizers even taped thin carpet down over most of the concrete floor, which made bare feet more comfortable and reduced the wear and tear on dropped clubs. The juggling hall was open 24 hours a day and constantly in use but never seemed cramped, even at its busiest. This photo was taken early on the first day, when people were still trickling in. The woman in the red shirt is Helene, from Vienna, passing clubs with Helen, from Cambridge.

“a large hall with acrobatic aparatus” — The Lublin site also boasts a second, smaller hall which was used by the acrobats and aerialists. Since we’re neither, we didn’t spend much time there, but our acrobat friends said it was excellent.

“a selfie with five people, three drinking beer” — Outside the halls was a social area with several food vendors and a bar tent. While wandering the site shortly after arrival we bumped into our friends Kat, Cameron and Brook, from Cambridge, enjoying their first beer of the convention. The bar tent featured live music or DJs every night.

“many people juggling and swinging fire” — Not far from the bar tent was the fire space, which was open every evening. It was usually pretty lively when we were walking past it on the way back to our apartment.

So, what happens at the EJC? The official programme shows most of the big events, but here’s a summary:

24-hour open juggling and acrobatics in the main halls. This is where we get to hang out with our friends, learn from each other, play together, and practice whatever we enjoy. This is really the centre of the convention.
Workshops on almost any circus (or other) topic imaginable, both organized in advance and spontaneous; see the workshop board photo below.
Shows, lots of shows. At a quick count there were at least twenty-three different shows at the convention, some of which were repeated as many as four times. And that’s not counting the late-night, informal, anything-goes “Renegade” shows.
The world’s most prestigious Fight Night Combat tournament (video from the finals).
A multi-day volleyclub tournament.
A joggling race (for the first time ever at an EJC).
Fire jams.
A parade through the city.
Unicycling competitions.
The games of the EJC.

Did we make it to all of this? Of course not! The EJC is too big, varied, and complex for anyone to participate in everything. In fact, it’s fair to say that everyone who goes to the convention has a “different EJC”, because they’ll see and do very different things over the nine days of the convention.

So, here’s a small taste of our EJC, starting with our juggling home base for the week.

It’s great to have a space where you can expect find people with similar interests to your own, and that’s usually how the convention self-organizes. The serious ball jugglers tend to be found in one area, the hoopers in another, and so on. Those with multiple interests move from spot to spot.

“a very cluttered area with juggling clubs, people, and food” — The club passers (that’s Greg’s crew) colonized one corner of the juggling hall, marked by the Passing.Zone banner that Juli brings with her from Ulm to the EJC every year. That’s Juli on the floor, in the black tank top. This photo was taken on the last evening of the convention, by which point people were getting tired, the weather had turned wet (note the towels hanging to dry), and things were a bit messy. Greg’s shoes, bag, clubs and water bottle are at bottom right.

“a view from the passing zone space including three people playing Go” — This is the juggling hall, seen from the Passing.Zone. Greg’s pink and blue clubs are at the near end of the carpet. On the juggling floor are Katie, Lukas, Maria, Staffan, Christian, Rupert, Jo, Suzanne, (another) Christian, and Cameron. Uwe is playing Go with Piet and talking to Andreas.

“three women crashed on and beside a couch using phones and tablets” — Eva and Christian from Pittsburgh (Eva is the one lying down) brought an inflatable couch which anchored the Passing.Zone and was very popular with tired folks. The woman beside Karen is Danni, a German living in the Netherlands.

We went to a couple of shows on most days, but didn’t get pictures of very many because it’s hard to get good shots from the audience and we were too busy enjoying ourselves. However, we did get a few.

“several people on a stage, one presenting a certificate and medallion” — This was taken just before the opening show, held on the first Sunday in an outdoor band shell about a thirty-minute walk from the main site. The four people at left are the core organizing team of this year’s EJC (**we cannot thank you enough!**). The woman at the microphone is an official from the regional government, presenting them a certificate and medallion on behalf of the city. The show itself was superorganism directed by Stefan Sing and Howard Katz.

“a selfie of four people in a long outdoor queue” — Shows at this year’s EJC were all general admission, so if you wanted a good seat you needed to arrive early and queue. This is us with our friends Nicki and Anett from Göttingen, waiting for one of the Open Stage shows.

“Kathrin Wagner seated on a chair balancing a ring” — Probably our favourite show of the convention was *I Was Told*, by our friend Kathrin Wagner from Berlin. This was an intimate and very personal piece, with juggling and slam poetry, presented in a small theatre to about a hundred people at a time. In the first part of the show, Kathrin balanced a ring on her head for several minutes and asked the audience to tell her what she should do. It was surprisingly weird and uncomfortable.

“Kathrin Wagner juggling seven rings on a chair” — The show featured some extremely impressive juggling, including seven rings while standing on a chair. But it was really the poetry that was most affecting, telling the story of Kathrin’s experiences as a female performer and describing both what she was told and how she came to appreciate herself.

“Greg and Karen in a show audience clapping” — This picture is borrowed from the EJC Facebook feed, and shows us giving Kathrin a standing ovation at the end of her show. At left is Emma Hornell, a performer from Sweden who is also a friend of Kathrin’s.

“two men on stage balancing on long boards” — Another show we particularly enjoyed was OVVIO by Lapso Cirk from Barcelona. The hour-long show consists entirely of them setting up unstable structures and then balancing on them. That might not sound impressive or entertaining, but we assure you that it was both, and the show has won multiple awards.

As mentioned above, one of the main features of the convention is the workshops.

“a cloth board with clothespegs and cards describing juggling workshops hanging from them” — This is a very small corner of one day’s workshop board. Some of the limited-attendance workshops (mostly acrobatics) were planned and listed in advance in the programme. However, most workshops are “organized” and scheduled by convention participants. If you have a workshop idea you can simply grab a card from the workshop table, write a title and description, pick a time and place, and put it on the board.

“two people with three clubs and a water bottle” — This is Greg and Daniel (we think) participating in the “beer passing” workshop put on by Simon and Hoschy. Beer passing patterns have one object that is never thrown, but always given from hand to hand. If you make that object a beer bottle, and aren’t too worried about catching something (a dubious proposition given the pandemic) you can take a swig from the bottle every time it comes to you. Here Greg is using a (closed) water bottle to subsitute for the beer.

On the last Saturday of the EJC there was a parade from the festival site through the city centre, ending near the cultural centre where the gala show was held.

“the front of a parade of jugglers” — We slept in quite late on the day of the parade, and it was raining heavily, so we spent the morning and early afternoon in our apartment. Eventually we decided to head out and find the parade. Our timing was perfect: just as we walked out into the downtown pedestrian area, mere metres away, we heard and saw the parade coming towards us.

“the middle of a parade of jugglers” — Of course we joined in for the remainder of the parade.

“a man holding a microphone and a very fit man holding a “fan club” sign” — The games of the EJC were held at the end of the parade route. This is the games announcer with the traditional scantily-clad sign holder, announcing the next event: a “fan club” version of rock-paper-scissors. No, it has nothing to do with juggling. Yes, it was fun to watch with several hundred participants.

“many people balancing juggling clubs on their faces” — One of the actual juggling games was the club balance. Initially participants just had to maintain the balance, but as the game went on they were required to do progressively harder things, including lying all the way down, touching the back of their head to the ground, then standing back up.

“hundreds of juggling props in the air” — At the end of the games we did the traditional “big toss up” photo opportunity.

“a blurry photo of a fox near some steps by a river” — And let’s end with this: a fox we saw by the river beside the convention site, while walking back to our apartment about one in the morning.