There's a new entertainment act at Edmonton Eskimo games and it's called juggling. Move aside country singers, meet Jugglin' Jordan. Chuckle as you might, Jordan Imgrund-Harvey, 15, is serious about the aerial art. In his one-man act, he focuses on creating magic, wonder and awe. Saying the Grade 10 Morinville Community High School student likes to juggle is like saying Jay-Z enjoys rapping. The apprentice juggler won the province-wide YEG's Got Talent competition to perform at the Edmonton Eskimos Oct. 28 game against the Calgary Stampeders. The social-media competition's goal was to tap talented amateurs and unknown performers from all disciplines for a performance shot. "It was pretty big news to me. Usually in a talent contest you see dancers and singers winning. You don't see jugglers winning," said an elated Imgrund-Harvey. In addition to throwing balls, his two-minute plus routine also involves clubs and knives. The competition received an undisclosed amount of video entries and judges narrowed the field to 15. "We looked at his video and Jordan looked very excited about what he was doing. And he executed his tricks with perfection," said William Akoto, Edmonton Eskimos' director of marketing. Three years ago, Imgrund-Harvey discovered juggling on YouTube and was transfixed. "I loved it so much. I liked that you needed random skills. I also liked how much control there was and the different patterns you could make in the air." Lacking the confidence to toss balls, he went straight to cigar box juggling. "It looked a lot easier at first," says Imgrund-Harvey, a smile in his voice. Cigar-box juggling is a vaudeville-style act whereby a cigar box is held in each hand, and a third box is tossed and flipped in between them. Jugglers perform midair box-exchanges and balancing tricks. After five months of practice, the novice juggler's cigar-box skills became fairly fluid. Needing a fresh outlet, he switched to throwing balls. "Every morning I would get up and practice a half-hour before going to school and a half-hour before going to bed." He now juggles and rotates a three-ball cascade for 20 minutes without a drop. "It's probably 90 per cent mental. At first it was very physical trying to get the right arc. At this point, I'm just thinking of patterns instead of the throw." To reach this level of dexterity, Imgrund-Harvey practices blind-folded. "When you take away your vision, it forces perfect throws." He plans to test his skills at the Las Vegas based World Juggling Federation's Junior Overall Championships on Dec. 14 to 19. The tournament style competitions award points for endurance, numbers juggling, best tricks and speed juggling. "The hardest thing I'm going to be doing is combat juggling. You have two opponents and they hit the other's clubs out of the air. It's going to be hard. I've never done it before." One of Imgrund-Harvey's aims is to join Cirque du Soleil, and the WJF championships are a step in that direction. The Eskimos-Stampeders game at Commonwealth Stadium this Saturday starts at 5 p.m.
