Juggling is a parlor trick. It’s a novelty. It exists so that dorks have something to do with a handful of oranges.

Thoughts like these accurately represent my impression of juggling prior to visiting The 47th Annual MadFest Juggling Extravaganza. I entered The Barrymore Theater carrying the baggage of my bias, predisposed to dismiss the eager jugglers for lack of personal knowledge. Prior to this evening, I had only ever encountered juggling in contexts that emphasized my impression of triviality — a stunt demonstrated for some handful of seconds to provide mild levity, then sequestered away until the next disjointed social gathering.

I left the Barrymore a changed man.

At first, I feared the event would be exactly as I imagined it. The opening act reinforced the notion of juggling’s inconsequence, a handful local hobbyists whose vaudevillian demeanor and slapstick antics entertained without innovation.

Over the course of the evening, however, things began to pick up. Featured acts displayed ever-increasing talent, pushing the envelope of what I thought possible with juggling. Performers incorporated rhythmic dance and expressive body movement into their pieces, the focus shifting away from the flying pins and more towards the composite result of this hybrid display of props and dance.

Not all acts limited themselves to juggling. Various performers expanded beyond this theme, making welcome forays down other avenues of carnival-grade performance.

A highlight among these was Circus Boy, a “Tonight Show” veteran who delighted the audience with showstopper acts, such as orally juggling two ping-pong balls by spitting them skyward and a riveting ride on an impossibly small bicycle.

The audience received all acts with tremendous enthusiasm and support, applauding through triumph as well as failure and establishing a very jovial atmosphere within The Barrymore. The nearly sold-out house held this vigor throughout the show, mustering energy only accessible to mothers watching their children perform at grade school talent shows.

The family-friendly production attracted an enormous number of eager children, including a pack of mystery rascals who continually let deflating balloons scream through the air and a platoon of 8-year-olds fervidly shouting earnest responses to every rhetorical question posed by a performer.

Previously, I had passed my judgments on juggling after only experiencing the most rudimentary segment of a wide-ranging spectrum of skill and application.

The most talented jugglers proved that the craft could venture into a finer level of performance art, a mesmerizing display in which the juggling batons became props in an impassioned dance piece.

The Juggling Extravaganza swiftly and thoroughly abolished my closed-minded attitude towards juggling. While my impression of the skill as a parlor trick certainly does apply for a large majority of practitioners, the Extravaganza proved it could be so much more.