Up In the Air

Sunday, Jul. 16, 2006 By LEV GROSSMAN / AGOURA HILLS
The entertainers call Garfield a dictator who's crushing juggling's creativity. He calls them hippies and hacks
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The world record for two people juggling 10 clubs between them is 378 catches. It is currently held by two Russian siblings living in the U.S. named Vova and Olga Galchenko. The Galchenkos also hold the world record for 11 clubs (152 catches) and 12 clubs (54 catches). The ability to juggle at this level is highly unusual, especially at their ages--Vova is 18, Olga 15. But then again, the Galchenkos are very unusual people.

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Vova (short for Vladimir) is shaggy haired and soft spoken. Olga has big eyes and a big smile and is a little hyperactive--she sometimes breaks into a soft-shoe dance routine to keep herself entertained. They're an unlikely duo to be at the center of a controversy that has divided the passionate, arcane and exclusive community of high-level professional juggling, the kind most people rarely see outside of Cirque du Soleil.

Growing up poor in the small industrial city of Penza, about 400 miles outside Moscow, Vova and Olga started juggling for fun in an after-school program. Pretty soon it got to be more than a hobby. The Galchenkos are easygoing and tons of fun to be around, but when it's time to work, something shifts behind their eyes and they get weirdly intense and laser-focused. "They have personalities that are very, very unpleasantly obsessive," says magician and juggler Penn Jillette (he means that with nothing but affection). "When I was around them practicing, they would do stuff that no one had ever done and then say, 'That sucks.'"

The obsessiveness paid off. "If you're talking about club passing, the two of them together are the best in the world," Jillette says. "Not just the best in the world. The best there has ever been." Standing up close to the Galchenkos when they juggle is like watching gravity get turned off. There's a moment of stillness, and then, with no obvious cue from either of them, the air is full of flying clubs, spinning in intricate orbits. The Galchenkos' juggling is beautiful--a kind of kinetic sculpture, a bravura display of human determination bringing order to the chaotic physical world. (For video footage of the Galchenkos' juggling, visit time.com/juggling.

The rest of the Galchenkos' world has been plenty chaotic. In 2003, thinking they would have more juggling opportunities in the U.S., they moved to New Hampshire, staying with a circus artist they had met while performing in Russia. They came alone: no mother, no father, just the two of them. Vova was 15, and Olga was 12. Neither spoke English.

Since then they have performed around the world and won major competitions. They have learned near perfect English. After some bouncing around, they now live with a generous juggling aficionado in a mansion about an hour outside Los Angeles. And they have acquired a mentor, a brilliant, bombastic, shaven-headed, muscle-bound juggler named Jason Garfield.

This brings us to the controversy. The world of élite juggling can be a political and even somewhat catty place. For decades the primary juggling organization has been the International Juggling Association (IJA). The IJA is committed to juggling as a form of entertainment: juggling with friends for fun, juggling to music, juggling by clowns. If you have ever seen juggler-comedian Chris Bliss's epic three-ball interpretation of the Beatles' Carry That Weight, you get the idea.