The Juggling Club practices twice a week on the Mall near the sundial — if the weather’s nice. Here, senior communication major Heidi Thalman tempts danger while DOTS staff member Joseph Levesque and senior theatre major Daniel Riker juggle over her.

They always juggle, no matter the odds — even on days when the rain is too strong, the weather is too chilly and the wind is too blustery. But in that weather, the Juggling Club is stuck inside.

The members relocate to room 0116 or 0117 in Reckord Armory, places that are classic Armory: yellowed, weathered desks, dollar-green chalkboards, limited space.

Yet the club makes the room its own. As entertainers who adapt quickly, these people know how to make it work — they cram the desks into the back of the room to make floor space, prop speakers up on the blackboard’s chalk ledges, sprawl out with laptops and notes and take off their shoes to get comfortable.

On a rainy Tuesday evening in late February, “Rolling in the Deep” cranked out of the speakers in 0117. Looming midterms had taken most of the club prisoner, even three of the five regulars. They apologized for being boring and doing their homework as they watched the other two juggle, mouthing along to the Adele song.

They call their biweekly meet-ups “club,” and refer to it casually: “Is there club today?” It’s all done simply, a friendly reminder of the club’s more than 25-year history and the community that revolves around this single word. Club is the circle of life in the ultimate sense: Veteran jugglers pass down old tricks to newbie jugglers; the newbies one day become the veterans.

Heidi Thalman, a senior communication major, describes her juggling journey as a determined one: She woke up one morning and decided it was the day she would learn how to juggle. She tried for 10 straight hours, she said, and still hadn’t perfected it. So she kept trying, and now she can fire-juggle, tossing flaming objects through the air with ease.

“We’re all casual jugglers here,” she said, twirling a club in her hand. “It’s not our dying passion to go onstage and perform. It’s our hobby — something to relax.”

They’re all buddies. Shabai Liu, a freshman computer science major, rooms with freshman animal sciences major Cody Silva, and sophomore mechanical engineering major Vincent Wu lives on their floor. All three are club regulars.

Sara Shen, a sophomore computer science major, joined because Wu joined.

“I like the environment,” she said. “These are the people I’m around, regardless of whether I’m in club or not.”

Upon hearing the commotion and seeing the clubs and other objects whizzing in the air, passersby took curious looks into the basement Armory room, only to keep walking. The club members’ conversations digressed, overlapping and meshing together into a single story of the community every Tuesday and Friday.

“Feel like you’re in a class with a really old professor yet?” Thalman asked.

A rainbow-colored umbrella remained open in the corner of the room that day, a reminder of the dreariness outside. And still, the speakers blasted, the friends joked and the clubs soared.

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The act of tossing props in the air dates back to ancient Egyptian times, from about 1990 to 1700 B.C., based on research done by Arthur Lewbel, a professor at Boston College. Juggling was prominent in several other ancient cultures around the world, too. Vaudeville captured the art form in the 19th century but wasn’t able to transition with the majority of the entertainment world to radio; juggling fell with it, but rose again with television. Now it has evolved into several different types, forms and hand patterns.

Senior psychology major Sophie Jablansky, president of the Juggling Club, picked up the art at 10 years old and got much better after joining the club at this university. She has just finished organizing the Congress of Jugglers, an annual convention the club hosts for juggling enthusiasts.

To Jablansky, the unifying link between different forms of juggling is object manipulation — whether it’s with clubs, rings or unicycles. Blake Waybright, a juggler from York, Pa., who visited this university during the Congress of Jugglers, said the umbrella of juggling breaks down into two categories: flow sports (hula hoops, poi, balancing acts) and throwing sports (rings, clubs, balls). Jugglers, too, are separated into different groups — the technical jugglers committed to the careful execution of steps and the performance-based jugglers who do it for more of an entertainment purpose.

Thalman, a fire-juggler, is familiar with different styles of juggling — for example, combat juggling involves jugglers who try to interfere with one another’s juggling and can evolve into zombie combat, trying to knock other jugglers’ clubs out of the air as they themselves walk around and juggle.

Wu, a regular juggler, has been mastering a style called diabolo since middle school. The tricky form involves flipping a yo-yo-like spool back and forth on a string with two sticks to create a spinning effect.

Juggling hasn’t caught on widely, but Jablansky is confident people will love it if they give it a try. It has a weird vibe, associated with circus clowns and the like. But it forms a community that bonds people together over a quirky art form, she said.

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Daniel Riker owns a unicycle, a jester’s hat and several articles of colorful clothing. The senior theatre major has a quiet smile and a glint of mischief in his eyes. His hair is a wavy intermediary between gold and bronze. He’s lanky. His fellow jugglers call him “the magical pixie that spreads happiness across campus.”

He is the unicycle guy.

“I ride past people and they say, ‘Dude, that’s awesome,’” said Riker.

He’s been juggling for about eight years, and can juggle up to six balls or four clubs (the bowling-pin shaped ones — but “if you call them pins, people will call you a pinhead,” he said) at one time. Now he knows how to juggle poi — balls with tails that create circular patterns in the air. He’s not very experienced with diabolo but he can do it.

Riker started juggling simply because he wanted to learn a new skill. But all of it — unicycling, juggling — he does to clear his mind.

Lessons learned from juggling include, “What goes up, must come down,” he said.

He learned how to ride a unicycle by holding on to two people as he pedaled, keeping concentrated and keeping focused. Now he can juggle while riding atop his unicycle.

People sometimes ask him if they can try his unicycle. He has to deny them.

“Nobody has legs long enough to reach the pedals,” he said.

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The sign announcing the Congress of Jugglers is a piece of loose-leaf paper stuck to the door of Ritchie Coliseum, written in red marker.

Inside, it’s a circus — almost literally. One person is juggling atop a long-board. Some are juggling across the top of a volleyball net. Some are purists, juggling with two or three balls or clubs to the booms of typical arena-rock pump-up music. People of every size (younger kids to older adults) and juggling equipment of every size (balls, clubs, rings) fill the gym’s length.

The Congress of Jugglers, held this year in the first week of April, is the 21st annual festival. It celebrates the art by inviting jugglers for a daylong event including free juggling and a show performed by this university’s Juggling Club.

“It’s sort of like a religion,” said Barry Sperling of Fairfax County, Va. He and his club were crowded around a sign with a crest reading, “Fairfax Jugglers,” near the left-side bleachers. He joked that his family was atheists, but he branched off to learn the “religion of juggling” at age 50. He’s proof that juggling clubs exist after college, too.

For Sperling, who’s been coming to the congress for almost the entire span of its existence, the event is pure fun. There’s nothing difficult about it, he said.

Bonding happens at the congress almost instantly. Scott Moore of Germantown, Md., and Joe Kohlhaas of Fredericksburg, Va., tossed seven clubs between them after having just met, dropping some, keeping others afloat.

Moore’s love of juggling evolved from tennis at a summer program. His roommate was a tennis player and juggled tennis balls. The hobby stuck.

“It’s not an ego thing for me,” Moore said. “For me, it’s like magic. When you first see someone juggling, it’s like, ‘How the heck did they do that?’”

“I’m not sure there is any sport or activity that is still magic after you learn how to do it,” he added.

It’s like jazz, he said. Listeners have no idea what will happen as a jazz piece evolves, and that’s the beauty of it.

“I can’t play an instrument to save my life,” he said. “This, however, works out.”

Kohlhaas teased his new buddy lightly: “Could you really do that to save your life?”

Then, as if a lightbulb went on, Moore turned to me and posed an idea.

“It’s even better if you’re surrounded by it.”

Before I knew it, I was between the two men, waiting and cringing — “Don’t flinch,” they said — ready for clubs to soar by. They told me to stand completely still and poised themselves.

One by one, clubs whizzed by my head. The thuds of the arena and the laughter of the jugglers vanished. All that was left was the men in tandem with these agile clubs flying quickly, just missing my nose in the most beautiful way. I knew I was immune. I knew nothing would hurt me.

It was magic.