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But Saturday’s grand finale show with the Mud Bay Jugglers will engage eyes at least as much as ears.
Now in their 30th year together, the jugglers are not as unlikely a choice for a concert series as they might at first appear.
During the past several years, they have performed regularly with old-timey favorites The Tune Stranglers, as they will tonight.
And the bearded trio is a uniquely musical band of jugglers. They first performed to music in 1982 with a piece set to Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt. It was that show that set the tone for what the group would become, particularly in regard to choreography and music.
“All of us in the group play music, and so we are sort of musically oriented,” said Alan Fitzthum, who joined the jugglers before that pivotal performance. “It’s nice to have that music there; it is nice to juggle to the rhythm of it.”
Rounding out the group are founding member Doug Martin and Harry Levin, who joined them in 1995 and who plays stand-up bass with The Tune Stranglers when he’s not juggling.
Music is a big part of what makes the Mud Bay Jugglers stand out, Fitzthum said.
“When we started using music, no jugglers did,” he said. “In the last five or 10 years maybe, music has been more common for jugglers, but most people don’t juggle to the rhythm; they use music that feels exciting and they juggle to the feel of it.
“We’ve always juggled to the rhythm of the music.”
The Mud Bay Jugglers’ choreography has a lot in common with dance, he said. “We do a lot of movement, and we perform the show as though it is dance choreography, so we’re really used to counting.”
Of course, the difficult part about choreographed juggling is that if the timing gets off, the jugglers have to find their way back on. But they’ve been doing it for so many years, that rarely happens.
The jugglers have performed at Music in the Park in Olympia, but not since the ’80s, Fitzthum said.
The city of Lacey has never before had a show that’s more than a standard concert as part of its Lacey in Tune concerts, which happens Wednesdays and Saturdays, said Sean Finney, a recreation coordinator for the city.
Of course, Lacey’s summer children’s entertainment series often has jugglers in addition to magicians, reptile handlers and other unusual offerings.
But the Mud Bay Jugglers are a special feature by any standard. They generally perform locally only once every five years or so, but it’s been just six months since the group’s big 30th anniversary show.
“We were very excited to get them,” said Jeannette Sieler, Lacey’s recreation supervisor. “They’re kind of our grand finale.”
The show won’t have new material, Fitzthum said, because the latest numbers can’t be replicated outdoors.
“There are things that we can adapt to doing outside,” he said, “but there are a few things we just can’t do because they require a blackout or something like that.”
Mud Bay Jugglers
What: The popular local juggling trio, known for its beards and choreographed juggling, is the finale for Lacey in Tune, juggling to music by The Tune Stranglers. After, there’ll be a double feature of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” (both PG-13).
When: Performance at 7 p.m. Saturday, movies at dusk
Where: Huntamer Park, corner of Woodland Square Loop and Seventh Avenue, Lacey
Tickets: Free
More information: 360-491-0857, ci.lacey.wa.us
