The 17th New Zealand Juggling Festival took place in March 2009 in the idyllic surrounds of Stedfast Park in Piha, one of the wild west coast beaches about an hours drive from Auckland.

Around 150 jugglers attended this year, coming from all corners of the country and a few from further afield as well. While I was there I heard accents from Australia, America, Ireland and France, just to name a few.

Marky Mark and Pauly Paul (aka the Blingling Bros) led the Auckland based team that organised the festival. They organised an awesome 4-day weekend with a great site, two shows, a jugglers after-party, workshops and games.

The workshops throughout the festival included juggling, poi, staff, diabolo, contact juggling, and hula hooping. I helped to run a couple of workshops on club passing and some neat tricks that I saw at the EJC last year. I really enjoyed being able to share what I learnt.

While the children tried to avoid the only bane of the festival - the ever-present wasps, the juggling games took place. Classic games like club balance, long distance diabolo pass, endurance, unicycle combat and three-legged races kept everyone entertained for a couple of hours. The prizes were fun second-hand club sports trophies that the organisers had picked up from somewhere, a nice touch to the games.

One of the great things about the juggling festival was its location, a couple of kilometres from one of New Zealand’s most spectacular beaches. One evening we headed to Piha township, got a mountain of chips from the local fish&chip shop and sat on the beach as the sun headed towards the horizon.

Later that evening the public show kicked off with some outdoor aerials in the gathering dusk, after which the crowd moved in the marquee for the rest of the show. Lots of local talent performed, including the Blingling Bros, some artists who are with Circus Aotearoa, and as always, some very talented performers who were passing through. At the NZ festival there is usually a call for performers on the weekend, and they are usually really lucky with the talent that they get. After the show there was a fire jam, a free form fire party where the poi-twirlers and staff-spinners got to show off their skills.

Overall it was a great festival. The weather was fine, the location was stunning, and as always, the people really made it! Whether it was club passing in the wee small hours, being taught how to balance on a globe, an impromptu workshop on re-wicking fire equipment, checking out the merchandise at Fling Juggling, or taking advantage of the coffee tent, there were always great friendly people around to talk to. I’m looking forward to the next NZ festival!

Hannah Sutherland