Wine and acrobatics shouldn’t go together, this magazine cover from 1986 notwithstanding. Vaudeville Nouveau – Mark Sackett (pouring the wine), Danny Mankin (suavely looking at the camera) and me – usually performed this acrobatic trick with juggling.
One time, when we were working between sets at a music festival, the belt that I used to hold Danny snapped. I flew back so fast I saw the bottoms of Mark’s feet floating in mid air. Danny and Mark landed standing up with their juggling clubs in their arms and I ended up 10 feet away behind a speaker stack.
After taking a quick mental inventory of my body, and finding everything still in the right place, I pulled into a tuck and bounced back out on stage on my rear end (my signature move at the time) and then kipped up to stand with my partners.
As we were leaving the venue, a young juggler wanted to know how we built the belt with a quick release mechanism for this dramatic dismount. I told him it was a trade secret and went off to ice my ass.
A golden mistake.
