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Flying Karamazovs promise dazzling landing at Cain Park
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BY: Carlo Wolff Special to the CJN
Count on kibitzing, dazzling juggling and more when The Flying Karamazov Brothers perform at Cain Park July 22.
“It’s a pretty great show,” says Mark Ettinger, a.k.a. “Alexei,” one of four Flying Karamazov Brothers. (Paul Magid and Howard Patterson, who founded FKB at the University of California in Santa Cruz, are, respectively, “Dmitri” and “Ivan”; Roderick Kimball is “Pavel.”) In a recent phone interview from Seattle, Ettinger says the Cain Park performance will be one of the earliest in FKB’s upcoming tour to showcase a new show, tentatively called “4Play.” It’s a “clean, family show,” he hastens to add.
A longtime member of this renowned juggling-comedy troupe, Ettinger says the show “hearkens back to the days of silent film. It’s traditional vaudeville with a lot of contemporary twists. There’s a lot of really cool juggling in it, with all kinds of balls that light up, and different, interesting club-passing combinations. There’s also a lot of comedic poetry in the interplay of the characters and some great music, some of which we play live.”
The genetically unrelated “brothers” also will communicate verbally, though what they’ll say remains to be heard. “When we’re improvising the juggling, things will happen where we will speak,” said Ettinger.
Named after The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last novel, The Flying Karamazovs have been concocting magic for more than 30 years, coming to prominence in the mid-’70s in San Francisco, national cultural capital of all things alternative. Patterson and Magid pooled their juggling skills in 1972 while undergrads at Santa Cruz, where they discovered a shared Jewish background. Over the years, Magid and Patterson, whose Ashkenazi background informed an FKB presentation called “LIFE: A Guide for the Perplexed” honoring 12th-century Rabbi Moses Maimonides, have been FKB constants. Patterson, however, is taking some time off this year; Nick Flint, an Australian, will take his place at the Cain Park show, notes Ettinger, who is half-Jewish.
In his biography, featured on the performers’ website fkb.com, Ettinger calls himself a “jongleur and a warrior ... hard at work undermining the dominant corporate ideologies of materialism, commercialism and globalism in every way he can.”
“I am a jongleur and a humanist,” he said. “I believe in the beauty of the human race, and I fight in every way I can to try and contribute to the world in a positive way.” His vehicles for accomplishing these lofty goals are juggling and music.
South Euclid freelance writer Carlo Wolff is the author of Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.
The Flying Karamazov Brothers present “4Play” at Cain Park at 8 on Sun., July 22. 216-371-3000.
“It’s a pretty great show,” says Mark Ettinger, a.k.a. “Alexei,” one of four Flying Karamazov Brothers. (Paul Magid and Howard Patterson, who founded FKB at the University of California in Santa Cruz, are, respectively, “Dmitri” and “Ivan”; Roderick Kimball is “Pavel.”) In a recent phone interview from Seattle, Ettinger says the Cain Park performance will be one of the earliest in FKB’s upcoming tour to showcase a new show, tentatively called “4Play.” It’s a “clean, family show,” he hastens to add.
A longtime member of this renowned juggling-comedy troupe, Ettinger says the show “hearkens back to the days of silent film. It’s traditional vaudeville with a lot of contemporary twists. There’s a lot of really cool juggling in it, with all kinds of balls that light up, and different, interesting club-passing combinations. There’s also a lot of comedic poetry in the interplay of the characters and some great music, some of which we play live.”
The genetically unrelated “brothers” also will communicate verbally, though what they’ll say remains to be heard. “When we’re improvising the juggling, things will happen where we will speak,” said Ettinger.
Named after The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last novel, The Flying Karamazovs have been concocting magic for more than 30 years, coming to prominence in the mid-’70s in San Francisco, national cultural capital of all things alternative. Patterson and Magid pooled their juggling skills in 1972 while undergrads at Santa Cruz, where they discovered a shared Jewish background. Over the years, Magid and Patterson, whose Ashkenazi background informed an FKB presentation called “LIFE: A Guide for the Perplexed” honoring 12th-century Rabbi Moses Maimonides, have been FKB constants. Patterson, however, is taking some time off this year; Nick Flint, an Australian, will take his place at the Cain Park show, notes Ettinger, who is half-Jewish.
In his biography, featured on the performers’ website fkb.com, Ettinger calls himself a “jongleur and a warrior ... hard at work undermining the dominant corporate ideologies of materialism, commercialism and globalism in every way he can.”
“I am a jongleur and a humanist,” he said. “I believe in the beauty of the human race, and I fight in every way I can to try and contribute to the world in a positive way.” His vehicles for accomplishing these lofty goals are juggling and music.
South Euclid freelance writer Carlo Wolff is the author of Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.
The Flying Karamazov Brothers present “4Play” at Cain Park at 8 on Sun., July 22. 216-371-3000.
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