The Spotlights Were Like Clouds: Life and Craft

We all have our brushes with history, large or small. Sometimes they’re instructive. Back in the 1980s, while spending a summer in rural upstate New York, I attended a circus. It was the epitome of rinky-dink, a tiny big top in a hayfield with some bleachers. One ring.

Approaching the tent before the show, I noticed a woman standing behind it practicing juggling. She seemed quite good at it—I had taken an interest in the circus arts myself and had learned the basics of keeping balls in the air. Maybe, I thought, the show would surpass its venue.

We got to see the Ham & Eggs Revue, which consisted of tricks by a troupe of semi-trained hogs and chickens. An acrobat, a trapeze act, a few clowns. Then the juggler. The ringmaster announced her: “Miss Lottie Brunn!”

I was astounded. Lottie Brunn was widely acknowledged to be one of the most talented jugglers in history, a one-time star attraction and a living legend of the circus. It was like announcing that Itzhak Perlman would now play us some fiddle tunes.

Lottie came out and did her act in front of maybe a hundred spectators. It was precise, razzle-dazzle juggling of the old school—balls flashing at lightning speed through intricate patterns, her hands a blur. Then a spinning ball on top of another spinning ball, a third ball balanced on a stick balanced on her forehead, hoops spinning on wrist and ankle. Than bam!—another trick, and another— her sequined costume flashing shards of light onto the sawdust and canvas.

Lieselotte Brunn—her given name—was born in Germany eight years before Hitler came to power. Her father ran a gym and taught his children to juggle. Lieselotte left school at 14 to assist her brother, Franzl, with his juggling act. They managed to land a contract to perform in neutral Sweden, where they waited out the war. In 1948, the duo, now known as Lottie and Francis, came to America to tour with Ringling Brothers.

Lottie married in 1951, gave birth to a son, and went on the road as a solo act. She was the first and only woman juggler to do her act in Ringling Brothers’ center ring.

In 1959 she landed a gig at Radio City Music Hall in New York. First, the leggy Rockettes did their thing. Then the diminutive Lottie stepped nervously onto the vast stage. The curtain rose. She began her routine. “I did the best performance I ever did,” she remembered. She juggled in the mammoth auditorium four times a day for eight weeks. “I felt I was in heaven. The spotlights were like clouds.”

Lottie Brunn.

For two more decades she traveled the world, performing at the Savoy in London, on cruise ships, in Las Vegas, with circuses, and on the Ed Sullivan Show. Before every performance and on her days off, she practiced. She worked on her technique for six or seven hours a day without fail. “Even doing two or three shows,” she said, “I would practice the same.”

Juggling is a unique skill ruled by the unbending laws of gravity. It requires absolute precision and pinpoint timing. Every additional object added to the cascade increases the difficulty exponentially. Lottie was noted as one of the few jugglers ever to keep eight hoops aloft.

Lottie carefully shaped her performance. “It has to have a sequence, a meaning,” she insisted. “It has to build to a finish.” Barely five feet tall, she always performed in high heels, adding an additional challenge.

Afflicted by arthritis, Lottie retired in 1985 at the age of sixty. Seeing her near the end of her career, I was struck by something other than the poignancy of the fading star. The fragility of fame and the toll time takes on finely honed skills are the home truths known to every performer, every athlete, and ultimately, every human who lives long enough.

What moved me and stuck in my memory was the sight this superlative performer practicing in the twilight behind a patched tent before an inconsequential gig in a one-horse town where she would do her act in front of a minuscule crowd. Practicing as she had practiced every day, getting it right, bringing the act to whatever perfection she could attain on that particular day.

It is that combination of pride and humility, of courage and concentration, that marks the true artist, that devotion, above all, to craft. “Juggling is hard,” Lottie Brunn said. “It takes a lot of nerves, it takes a lot of work.”

She died in 2008 at the age of eighty-two. A few fuzzy video depictions of her juggling remain. And, for me, the memory of her—practicing.

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