www.coloradoan.com4 ## Thursday, October 1, 2009
In their new show “GravityAttacks!,” coming to theLincoln Center on Oct. 8, JonWee and Owen Morse invitethe audience to join them intheir fight against what theyconsider one of the world’smost evil forces — gravity.
The five-time GuinnessWorld Juggling Record hold-ers will juggle such friendlyobjects as chainsaws, torchesand knives with the greatestof ease. Even audience mem-bers will be getting in on theact, as objects to be juggledanyway.
The Coloradoan talkedwith this dynamic duorecently to find out whatdraws someone to jugglechainsaws, in ballettights no less (hencethenameof theskit “TheChainsaw Ballet”), andhow they hassled TheHoff into admitting thathe likes juggling.
So when didyou go fromjuggling nor-mal stuff to…insane stuff?
Jon: Thecrazy stuff started probablyearlier than it should. Evenas a kid justlearning to jug-gle — from thetime I was ableto flip a club I startedtrying to figureout, you know,can we lightthe end of thison fire and have a torch, andcan I juggle one of the knivesfrom the kitchen, that sort ofthing. Maybe it’s one of thoseingrained things to want to
make something crazier andmore dangerous.
Owen: I can recall get-ting a tennis balland thinkingthat Ishouldlight it onfire and justjuggle it with socks over myhands and that that would bea pretty cool thing. Turnsout (lit) tennis balls start to
melt; therubberstarts tostick to yourhands. Thenthe sockscatch on fire.You learnpretty quick-ly that that’s
not really thatsmart.
J: One of thethings you quicklylearn as a juggler ishow fire behaves in
different situa-tions.
O: And youmake your
parents proud…J: It really is a
gradual progression.You sort of learneach thing step by
step. You don’t start withsomething dangerous. Firstyou start with three balls and
then when you getgood at that then
you learn to juggleclubs, and theclubs are really
where you learn toflip something one timearound, which is pretty cru-cial in juggling somethingdangerous. There’s a catchingend and then there’s an endthat you don’t want to catch.So as soon as you get comfort-
ablecatching
clubs thenyou thinkall right,
now I canprobably do
torches. Andthen a knife. Withthe chainsaws
people often ask,‘How do you get
started on chain-saws?’So how did you get
started juggling chain-saws?
J: That’s one of those thingswhere first you take the bladeoff and you don’t turn themotor on. You start out in thebackyard over soft grasswhere if you drop it, youwon’t break it. Then afterawhile when you think you’vegot the flip of it down prettywell, then you turn it on butyou still leave the chain off.Then when you think, OKnow it’s working fine, thenyou put the chain on.
O: Every level has its ownsort of scary properties, a fearfactor.
J: As crazy as it all seems,we try not to do somethingthat is really stupid or isgoing to cut off an arm orsomething until we feel prettywell prepared.
What’s going throughyour mind the first timeyou do a trick fully sans‘safety net’?
O: Oh please, oh please.J: It is really terrifying,
especially performing thingslike that for the first time. Imean, I remember doing thechainsaw for the first time infront of an audience and Iwas just terrified. You’re nerv-ous enough because it’s a newroutine and dangerous but it’s
still hard to do somethingright the first time. For aboutthe first year, (doing thechainsaw ballet) was prettyscary. Actually it’s still kind ofscary; not as scary as it wasthen but it still gets the heartrate up. We don’t take it light-ly. We often comment that ina full 90 minute show of jug-gling and catching and come-dy no matter how many times
we’ve done it, we still findnew places to make mistakes.It keeps us on our toes.
Speaking of toes, aftermore than 20 years ofdoing this how many fin-gers and toes do you guyshave left?
J: I think we’re still at 40total.
BY STACY NICK • [email protected]
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• When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8 • Where: LincolnCenter, 417 W. Magnolia St. • Cost: $29
• Information: (970) 221-6730 or www.lctix.com
cover story
Continued on Page 5
O: We haven’t had any-thing major (accident wise), acouple scrapes here andthere.
J: We have bled onstage afew times... a few sprains andbruises things like that, somefalls. Obviously we don’t want
to give your readers theimpression that
they’re showingup to see some
disaster hap-pen, but
that ispart ofthe
excite-ment. It’spretty hardto do all of itperfectly all of the time;there has to be some room forsome error.
So your performance atthe Lincoln Center willinclude the ChainsawBallet, what else will yournew show, “GravityAttacks,” feature?
J: “Gravity Attacks” is a
series of fun comedy stuntsbut we basically introducethe show as if we are twoguys on this quest to defeatgravity. I think too many ofus have just come to acceptgravity as something that isinevitable, but really it’ssomething we should befighting. Then one day if weall pull together, we can beatit.
O: A noble quest.J: So we talk about how as
jugglers we’re really the onlyones who
are
takingthis seriously.
The only oneswho dayafter day,throw afterthrow,we’refightinggravityeverystep ofthe way.But wethink we
can beat itif we have
enough peo-ple behind us.Is that
where jugglingaudience members
comes in? (Before eachshow, audience memberscan sign up for a randomdrawing to be one of threepeople the duo will juggleon stage. Those who signup must be taller than 5feet, 3 inches and shorterthan 6 feet, 3 inches andheavier than 100 pounds
and lighter than 200pounds.)
O: That came aboutbecause we’d been jugglingchainsaws for a number ofyears and were trying to fig-ure out a way that we couldtake juggling to the next leveland juggling elephants was-n’t much of an option.
J: They’re very diffi-cult to house and feed.Oh, and to juggle.
So we were justtrying to think ofsomething moreoutrageous thanchainsaws. Thenwe thought whatif we juggled
people fromthe audience.So we liked thatidea but it took along time to fig-ure out howto make thateffective, andhow we couldreally getrandom peo-
ple from theaudience to
successful-ly juggle
them onstage. It has turnedinto one of the more popularpieces in the show. When peo-ple do it they always askafter if they can do thatagain. It’s kind of like a once-in-a-lifetime carnival ride.And this is one where wenever make mistakes.
What other new thingswill be in this show?
J: We do juggling while rid-ing Segway scooters.
O: Also juggling rat traps— and trying not to getsnapped.
J: Yes, we’re always comingup with new and creativeways in which people canhurt themselves. That’s basi-cally what we try to do forpeople’s entertainment.
Is there anything youdraw the line at jug-gling?
O: You just can’t jugglelive animals of any kind,you just can’t. The peoplejuggling — they can giveyou their consent. There’sjust no way to juggle an ani-mal.
J: Without getting introuble with some agency ororganization. So humans
are fair game butnot other animals, atleast in public, on stage.
O: Sure, on stage.J: What we do in the pri-
vacy of our own homes…O: My cats love it.J: Your cats never go near
you anymore, Owen.O: But they do love it.J: You don’t want to catch
the wrong end of a cat.(Thinks a minute) I’m notsure which end that is.
O: Me neither.J: These are the kind of
discussions we have: What’sthe wrong end of a cat?
O: Is there a wrong end ofa cat?
J: I don’t think there’s aright end of a cat. I’m moreof a dog person.
What are some of themisconceptions aboutyour show?
J: People don’t know whatto expect with a jugglingshow. Often it sounds likeit’s a kids show, or peopleare thinking, how am Igoing to watch you jugglefor an hour and a half? Itreally is important to notethat it’s a comedy show. Itreally is about the jokes and
the laughs and the funnysituations. Sure there is alot of juggling — that’s whatthe show is built around —but it really is a comedyshow.
You even restoredDavid Hasselhoff’s faithin jugglers.
O: Ah, a proud moment.(The Passing Zone were
finalists in NBC’s“America’s Got Talent”where they lost to an 11-year-old but won the affec-tion of judge Hasselhoff,who claimed at their firstperformance to hate all jug-glers.)
J: We turned the Hofffrom a juggler hater to ajuggler… tolerator. Thatwas tricky; from the verybeginning he was basicallysaying that he hated jug-gling acts. Great, here wecome trying to win a milliondollars in a competition,and one of the judges openlyhates juggling. We thought,we’re not going to get toofar here, and yet he likedus, and we got to get him upon stage and threw knivesaround him and he actuallyhad a really good time.
Thursday, October 1, 2009 ## 5www.coloradoan.com
cover story
5. Do it with your eyes closed, because you don’t wantto lose an eye!4. To avoid scuffing the floor, juggle dangerous itemsover a group of soft, fluffy kittens.
3. Sharpen the objects, because everyone knowsthat a jagged cut is more difficult to stitch.2. Have 9-1-1 on speed dial.
1. Don’t expect to win $1 million on America’sGot Talent! (We’re not bitter about it, hon-estly!)
— Passing Zone
Top 5 tips for juggling dangerous items
On the InternetVisit www.coloradoan.com to get asneak peek at The Passing Zone.
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