Backflip Boy and Beer: Chronicles of a Renegade Show at the European Juggling Convention (EJC)

In late July and early August 2024, I attend the European Juggling Convention (EJC) in Ovar, Portugal. One of the staples of the EJC is a nightly show that runs every day: the Renegade. It’s like a wild version of an open mic where everyone who performs a trick gets a beer (or another drink) as a reward. If someone wants to perform the same trick but do it better, you have a ‘clash’. The Renegade starts every night just after midnight and continues until there are no more tricks, somewhere beteen 4 and 5 am.

To give you an idea of the craziness, I’ve written down all the acts of single night in order. You should imagine that between many of the acts, a guy would run onto the stage to do a standing backflip, while everything is MC’d by a queer-ish clown, with everyone shouting “Allez!” to encourage the performers.

• Someone folds a rolling paper so they can make it move like a helicopter with their finger while running around the stage.
• Someone juggling for a minute with whatever gets thrown onto the stage.
• Someone reciting a dirty limerick.
• A girl who takes off her clothes to reveal a bodysuit printed with a naked woman’s body, then does something unclear with a string.
• Two guys doing a good acrobatic trick.
• Someone making a euro coin disappear multiple times to “I Will Survive” while dancing very strangely.
• A girl hula hooping.
• Someone who rips up a five euro bill and instead of making it whole again, sprinkles it over themselves.
• Someone standing on their head throwing playing cards into a net.
• Someone putting their finger in their nose in slow motion; after the shout “do it naked” (which happens during almost every act), dropping their pants and (pretending to?) put their finger in their butt.
• Someone balancing a crystal ball on their head with another crystal ball on top of that with yet another crystal ball on top of that.
• Someone miming threading a needle through their cheek and then pulling on the thread.
• Someone wanting to be kissed on stage while juggling three balls behind their back and over their shoulders (nobody wants to, so the clown does it in the end).
• Someone reciting an “old English poem” that turns out to be an anti-fascist battle song.
• Someone getting six people to lift the couch where candidates wait for the stage on top of their, then juggling while couchsurfing.
• Two people passing clown noses to each other, from nose to nose, without using their hands.
• Someone balancing their phone on their nose by its corner.
• Someone juggling with three playing cards and catching one on their kissing lips.
• Someone balancing a club on their nose and making it do three flips.
• Someone miming a wild worship scene.
• The cards guy again, trying to bounce a playing card off the ground and catch it, taking off a piece of clothing whenever he fails, and only succeeding when completely naked on stage.
• A tuba player playing while someone throws a club into it, and someone on trumpet playing while balancing a club on the trumpet and then playing the trumpet while balancing it on their mouth.
• A clown on a tall unicycle using a whip to knock a flower out of someone’s mouth, and then using the same method to pop a long balloon between their legs.
• Someone picking something up from the ground with their mouth while standing on one leg without touching anything else to the ground.
• Two clowns, one who with great effort produces a menstrual cup from her vagina, the other drinks from it and turns into a zombie (clown’s comment: “that was pretty cool… I guess”).
• Someone stripping completely naked while juggling five balls.
• Someone working four diabolos simultaneously in one string to the song “alalalalalong,” followed by backflip boy doing a side-flip over it.
• Someone knocking away their own club, running after it and catching it.
• Two clowns connected by a string tied to their penises, with a finger puppet tightrope walking across it, followed by backflip boy side-flipping over it, and then people limbo-ing under it, while the two clowns both balance swords on their chins.
• Someone making huge soap bubbles.
• A drunk heckler who complains and thus has to get on stage or leave (“those are the rules: if you complain, come and do something better”) and then throws and catches three clubs with one hand at once (after shouting “no Italian, no naked”).
• A duo doing “acro-twerking” in a handstand, followed by two clashes trying to copy it.
• Someone maintaining three diabolos with one hand while chugging a beer with their other hand.
• Someone eating a banana with the peel on and then throwing it up over the edge of the stage.
• Someone throwing a marble from their foot to their head and catching and balancing it.
• Someone who put a steel cup in their pants and someone else throwing a cup onto it.
• Someone being swung around by their feet while drinking a beer.
• Someone playing recorder while balancing five balls on their body.
• Someone belly dancing and then catching a diabolo behind their back while blindfolded.
• Someone going from cross-legged to handstand and then drinking a beer from a cup.
• Backflip boy catching a diabolo with a sideways salto out of the air.
• The cards guy coming on stage naked, sticking a card to his forehead, someone seemingly guessing what it is, and when the card on his forehead is not the right one, he produces the correct card from his butt.
• Three Polish acrobats with one lifting another into a back flip while a third throws him a phone which he catches mid-flip.
• Someone spinning two devil sticks while blindfolded and standing on one leg to “The Final Countdown.”
• Someone climbing around a plank held by two people, followed by a clash of someone doing a handstand on the same plank, followed by someone trying to balance that plank naked on their lower back and buttocks, followed by someone who thought they could do it better.
• Someone doing classical ballet pirouettes.
• Someone folding their toes together and then licking their elbow.
• The clown moderator swinging a weight on a string.
• Someone spinning a beer bench on their shoulders.
• Someone in a handstand moving a ball from one knee pit to the other.
• Someone spinning LED ninja stars in the dark.
• Someone doing a trapeze act with someone sitting on the beer bench being lifted by six people.
• Someone taking off their socks (or well, trying to) in a handstand, then taking off their cap with their foot while doing a handstand split.
• A backflip challenge between backflip boy and someone else, they do at least ten in a row and finally do one together while holding hands.
• Someone basically doing a striptease.
• Someone doing insane stuff with four diabolos on one string (best diabolo performer I’ve ever seen).
• Someone moving a bottle cap from their forehead to their mouth using only facial muscles.
• Someone hanging like a flag from the tent pole to close out the show.

The cover image was shot by Maze Ziemer, please support him if you want him to be able to continue taking photos at juggling conventions. The women on the picture did not take part in the described Renegade show.