Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

Lots of laughter could be heard inside the Rowan Public Library’s main branch June 30 as a circus was going on — a Soap Bubble Circus with nine-time Guinness World Record winner Steve Langley of Huntersville performing.

Wendy Campbell, youth services supervisor, welcomed everyone and introduced Langley and his circus to the crowd. 

He will be returning to the Fisher Street branch on Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m. to perform again, and be at the East branch in Rockwell on July 2 and West branch in Cleveland on July 3.

She said that “the library is able to offer these shows because the Friends of the Rowan Public Library sponsor them for us.”

As he began his show, Langley told the group that he is a bubbleologist and explained that “what that means is I get paid to play with bubbles” and said he has the best job in the world.

He shared that he has two objectives in presenting his show, the first being “did you learn something about bubbles,” and secondly “did you see something done with soap bubbles that you have never seen done before” and when the event came to a conclusion and the crowd answered yes to both questions, he said, “looks like I accomplished my goals.”

As he performed the various tricks with soap bubbles, Langley provided facts about bubbles as well including the fact that the size of a bubble depends on the size of the wand or loop that one uses to make them.

Taking a large wand, he showed them how it made a large bubble and then went on to explain another rule of bubbleology, telling that “whatever you touch a bubble with, if it’s dry, the bubble will pop.”

Another factor that will cause bubbles to pop is evaporation as he said that a soap bubble is 98 percent water, which is why they could see the different colors in the bubbles.

Other lessons he shared with the group were that bubbles have three layers to them, two layers of soap around the bubble and a layer of water trapped between those two and they are not circles, but, as one youth in the crowd said, they are spheres.

Langley said that probably most everyone has played with bubbles and just popped them for fun; however, he stressed to the crowd that this event was not a bubble popping experience but they were going to see “all the amazing things that can be done with bubbles.”

Some of those tricks that he demonstrated included one of his world-record tricks of making a long hanging chain of bubbles.

Most call it a soap bubble caterpillar for how it looks, but, he said, “in honor of me being at the library and my favorite children’s book author, Eric Carle,” who wrote the “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” he said this day he would call his trick the very bubbly caterpillar and proceeded to make a 10-bubble chain.

Among the other tricks he performed were making a bubble bounce as on a trampoline, walking a snowman he made across a tightrope, a trick he created personally.

He also made a cube-shaped bubble, made a merry-go-round which twirled, followed by a bubble volcano and a rocket with the children providing a countdown to launch it.

Each trick brought laughter and squeals of wow and applause by children and adults alike.

As this was part of the library’s Summer Reading program,  Langley told the group, “if you have been inspired by my show, I’m going to give you a few titles of some books” that they might want to find and read and learn more about the subject of bubbles.

Prior to his providing a Soap Bubble Circus, Langley said he was a juggler, doing this for most of his 35-year career in entertainment. He has been doing bubbles for approximately 10-12 years, he said.

Mostly self-taught, Langley said he has attended conferences where other bubble artists share ideas and techniques and he has gotten a lot of information from some online resources.

Trying to set some Guinness World Records, he decided to switch from juggling to the world of bubbles. Wanting to set a juggling-related one, Langley thought about bubble juggling, which he said “might be a fun, novel, unusual attempt at a record. So that set me off exploring bubbles” adding that he “became enamored with it and just kind of fell in love with it and then realized that it can be a viable medium for entertaining and just sort of took off.”

While this was his first time to perform at the library, Langley has done lots of shows in the area including at the Cheerwine Festival and in Spencer at the Transportation Museum performing annually at the Polar Express providing pre-boarding shows as well as at Day Out with Thomas and the July 4th fireworks event.

Children and adults alike enjoy the Soap Bubble Circus as Langley said, “bubbles have a way of doing that. Bubbles sort of take you to a childlike place,” and as everyone at some point has played with bubbles, he said, “it triggers happy times, happy memories.”