Buffalo Diary, Friday
"...Olga and Vova close the show. They have improved tremendously from last year. First of all they have stage characters. Vova had been imitating his mentor, Jason Garfield, and appears somewhat angry and underwhelmed by the amazing juggling they are doing. Olga, meanwhile, is bouncy and cheerful and chewing gum and bouncing around the stage and generally doing things that piss her brother off even more. It’s a very good act. Ah, I suppose I should tell you about the tricks they did. OK, six club passing with all sorts of fancy throws. Seven clubs, including back to back with pirouettes, eight clubs with pirouettes, nine clubs tack to back, five club steals, and finally five clubs each into ten club passing and then back to five clubs each. There is only one drop. They are the best club passing team since Viktor and Anatoli split up, and possibly even better...
Back to the gym, where Jason is showing a video of Vova and Olga, that was filmed on Barry Bakalor’s Southern California estate, in the great room of the Bakalor’s mansion which is currently under construction. I’ve changed my mind about Vova and Olga being the best passing team since Viktor and Anatoli broke up. They are the best passing team of all time. The intro and the outro on the video are very funny, too. The intro has V&O very seriously claiming to be genetically engineered by the Russians to be perfect jugglers, and the outro has the outtakes where they crack up as they are trying to say this stuff.
Tricks, tricks, tricks, I suppose you want to know about the tricks on the video. Ten club one count, anyone? Passing ten clubs, then both passers do a simultaneous pirouette. Then another one. Then a third. Then they go back to both of them juggling five clubs and then stop. When I saw that I turned round and shook Vova’s hand..."
Andrew Conway