Fluggleburgh Pittsburgh Circus Arts Festival 2025 Recap

By JoAnn Ireland

Fluggleburgh (Flow Arts Juggle Pittsburgh) 2025, also referred to as the Pittsburgh Circus Arts Festival (https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/juggle/festival/) took place Friday, November 7 through Sunday, November 9, 2025 at the Kingsley Association, a recreation center, which is in the east end of Pittsburgh. There was juggling, acrobatics, flow arts, a beautiful gym, workshops, games, and a Saturday evening gala show. Fluggleburgh was $10 to attend for a single day or $20 for the entire weekend, and $10 to attend the Saturday evening gala show. Fluggleburgh is the successor to the Not Quite Pittsburgh Juggling Festival that took place from 2008 – 2015. T-shirts with two classic designs were also available for $20. There was free parking available at the Kingsley Association and there are three hotels, plenty of restaurants, coffee shops, and grocery stores all within one mile. The Steel City Clown Brigade (http://www.steelcityclownbrigade.org) was also in attendance selling beanbags.

Pittsburgh is accessible by plane at the Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) (https://flypittsburgh.com), train through Amtrak at the downtown Union Station (PGH), and by bus at the Intermodal Bus Station that is also downtown.

 

There were numerous workshops throughout this festival – 3 scheduled workshops on Friday, 16 on Saturday, and another 2 on Sunday. These included the following topics:

• Learn to Juggle – offered throughout the festival
• Mills Mess – Greg
• Poi 101 – Naomi
• Flowstar 101 – Juls
• Contact Staff 101 and 201 – Flosiris
• Intro to Multiplex Juggling (balls) – O’Ryan
• Poi 101 – Lydia
• Shared Juggling Patterns – BooglepLex
• Hat and Stick Exploration – Wondo
• Dragon Staff 101 – Flosiris
• Claymotion – Greg
• Intro to Staff Juggling – Wondo
• Clown Persona Types – Steven
• Hooping 101 – Lydia
• Interesting 3-person Passing Patterns – Christian, Lex, and O’Ryan
• Intro to Contortion – Talia
• Taps, Traps, and Other Crap (clubs) – O’Ryan
• Beginner Partner Acro Flow – Katheryn and Clifton
• Rope Dart 101 – Lexicon
• Pantomime – Zeppo
• Factory and Fake Columns – Emily

During a few of the workshops that I attended throughout the festival (see my bio, I’m partial toward beanbags, so that is mostly what I attended), Greg Phillips took the time to acknowledge those who have provided significant contributions to the concept’s development and widespread appeal, Steve Mills and Ron Graham for Mills Mess and Richard Clay and Sky King for Claymotion. Friday evening included workshops and open juggling in the spacious gym. An outdoor fire jam (preceded by fire safety instruction) was scheduled; however, a light drizzle led to in an indoor glow jam substitution. On Saturday open juggling, flow, and workshops continued at the Kingsley Association. (Editor’s Note: a small break in the rain Friday created the opportunity for a small fire jam).

The Saturday evening gala show was hosted by O’Ryan the O’mazing (https://www.oryantheomazing.com) who performs stage shows and stilt walking, and can provide workshops on the basics of juggling, balancing, stilt walking, partner acrobatics, and improvisational physical theater for schools, gym classes, summer camps, and corporate team building.

Dan and Major Scales was the first act that consisted of four individuals. Members of the group performed plate spinning (with a spiral stick that was uniquely visual) and poi. They also performed acrobatic combination tricks that included juggling, hula hooping, and balancing on a rola bola. Their finale included two individuals balancing on two rolling globes while passing six clubs around another individual who stood on a folding chair and spun a plastic swimming pool on a stick – it was quite a feat to see.

Lydia was next and she performed a flow / movement piece with two S-shaped staffs (Buugeng).

MK Lebeaux (https://www.mklebeaux.com) is from Columbus, Ohio and performed an artistic and fun piece where he pulled clothing out of a cardboard box (e.g., shoe, hat, shirt, jacket, boa, giant comb, multiple metal hangers) and artistically manipulated each item as he took them out of the box or put them on. It was a unique piece to watch and clearly a lot of thought went into it and his movements.

Quadruple Kerfuffle was the next act and included four individuals who performed partner acrobatic work, juggling, plate spinning, and passing with balls, as well as everyday objects with the theme of four individuals going through their day – waking up, exercising, meal preparation, driving. Their final trick included two individuals standing on the other two individuals shoulders with both sets passing six toilet brushes and six plungers.

Jasper Murphy (a.k.a. Jasper Champ) (https://www.jasperjuggles.com), who was half of the IJA 2025 gold medalist team GOBSMACK (with Matt Walmsley) was next to perform starting by juggling three LED clubs that included some balancing and club swinging. He also balanced three interlaced clubs on his head and then transitioned into a juggling pattern, a fun trick. He transitioned to four clubs by balancing two clubs on top of each other on his forehead and then went into a juggling pattern and continued with various columns patterns along with much more complex patterns. He closed out his performance with multiple impressive runs with five clubs.

 

Julia Rabbit (Wallace) was up next from Ohio and is a graduate of the Coney Island Clown Skool in both sideshow and clowning, and in her words, she very appropriately loves circles. She performed very smooth manipulation and spinning of one and two LED hoops, and proceeded to juggle LED three hoops and concluded her act by spinning four LED hoops.

Piping Thunder (Vaughn) and his dog Borf Lightning (https://www.pipingthunder.com) performed together. Vaughn demonstrated a few tricks with a whip, then Borf performed a few tricks. For the finale, Vaughn rode a unicycle while carrying Borf and cracking a whip.

 

Avi Kritzman (https://avikritzman.com) is from the Chicago area and performed foot juggling by spinning and balancing one and then two umbrellas with both feet and also one foot. He also manipulated a large cylinder with his feet. He then transitioned to manipulating one smaller-than-regulation basketball with his hands and feet, moving up to two basketballs with this feet. This was followed by juggling three basketballs with both his hands and feet including body rolls, and then added the aforementioned large cylinder. He removed the cylinder and added a fourth ball to the mix and concluded his performance by juggling five basketballs with his hands and feet. This is an act that audiences don’t typically get to see, so it was definitely a crowd pleasing performance.

O’Ryan the O’mazing closed out the show by using a leaf blower to unravel a roll of toilet paper that was attached to a helmet on his head. Juggling continued in the gym after the show and there was also a Renegade-style show at an off-site location.

Juggling and workshops continued on Sunday, with the addition of games and there were quite a variety of games – club balance combat, diabolo nose rolling, distance self passing, dizzy juggling race, huggling, human surf juggling, n-ball endurance, siteswap 93 endurance, snack toss, and the person who traveled the farthest to the festival. In a creative reuse of materials, other sports trophies were used and modified to make them juggling / flow and game specific.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (https://carnegiemnh.org) and Museum of Art (https://carnegieart.org) are both 2.5 miles away from the Kingsley Association. Admission is $25 for adults that allows you to visit both museums (reduced price and free options for admission are available). The Carnegie Museum of Natural History had truly impressive fossil, rock, gem, and mineral collections, as well as impressive nature dioramas, taxidermy animals, and a bug hall. At the Museum of Art I enjoyed the Claude Monet paintings on display, the Miniature Gallery featuring a number of Ruth McChesney’s miniature rooms, the Hall of Architecture that features a one twentieth scale model of the Parthenon, as well as a few rooms of extraordinary ordinary functional objects. On-site parking is available for a fee.

Not far from those two museums is Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) (www.cmu.edu), a prominent private university with over 7,600 undergraduate and 8,900 graduate students and is especially known for its College of Engineering, College of Fine Arts, and School of Computer Science. Impressively, Google’s Pittsburgh headquarters is very close to CMU and the Kingsley Association. The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) (www.pitt.edu), a public university with over 25,000 undergraduate (on all campuses) and 9,800 graduate students is also nearby. Both CMU and Pitt have juggling clubs, Masters of Flying Objects (https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/juggle/) and Masters of Dropping Objects (https://experience.pitt.edu/droppingobjects/home/).

For those driving in from the East, South, or West you might not realize that the steepest street in the Continental United States is Canton Avenue with a 37% grade – unicycle up or down at your own risk!

A lot of individuals put quite a bit of effort to put on this festival, whether it was teaching the aforementioned workshops, performing in the Saturday evening gala show, working at the registration table, or behind the scenes efforts to organize and run the festival and their efforts resulted in a fun time for everyone in attendance – be sure to check out Fluggleburgh next year!

Written by JoAnn Ireland. Videos and Photographs by JoAnn Ireland

JoAnn Ireland is a longtime hobbyist juggler who especially prefers juggling beanbags, joggles (running and juggling), and occasionally rides a unicycle. She is grateful for the opportunity to have been able to attend many IJA and regional juggling festivals.