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Philippe Petit is alive and well and still walking the wires

Lauren B. Johnston

11:30 AM EDT, May 5, 2008

A man dressed in black from top hat to canvas slippers strode through Washington Square Park Sunday afternoon, wheeling a unicycle and lugging a leather knapsack loaded with wooden pins.

After scanning the crowd of picnic-table chess players and college students splayed across the grass, he unpacked his bag and promptly began to juggle. Off in a shady corner, he attracted little notice - even when he removed the hat from atop his ginger hair and balanced it perpendicularly on the tip of his nose.

The bocce players kept their eyes on the court. The chess players kept theirs on the game. A couple sitting on a bench nearby chattered on. After all, outbursts of artistic expression and sudden fits of street performance are quite the norm in this park. But this wasn't your average asphalt circus act.

The fluid body tossing pins and dancing them through the air was none other than French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, the man who on August 7, 1974, stunned the city by stringing a tightrope between the World Trade Center Towers and walking back and forth across the wire eight times in 45 minutes.

Petit had just come from the Tribeca Film Festival's final screening of the documentary, "Man on Wire," which traces the back story of his wondrous and devilish feat.

The movie, directed by British filmmaker James Marsh, tells the tale like a classic heist story, introducing a motley cast of accomplices who joined forces to pull off the amazing stunt.

Don't worry if you missed it at Tribeca. The film, released by Magnolia Pictures, will be released in select New York City theaters on August 15.

After Sunday's morning screening, Petit appeared to booming applause and a standing ovation, then took questions and quietly announced he'd later perform his classic street act in Washington Square Park.

Petit said he fell in love with the intimate interaction of street performance as a teenager, and now nearly 60, he's still at it. "I will never abandon the street performing. I love it. It's the hardest kind of theater because it's never the same show," he said in an interview after the performance.

Sunday's show bounced from juggling to pantomime to unicycling to wire walking. He draws a circle on the ground then silently commands the crowd to hover round the outside. As though drawn by some super power magnet - they do. And they stay.

"In terms of his ability to draw and maintain a crowd without any cheap tactics, he's probably the best that I've ever seen," said Brian Dube, who makes juggling equipment and has known Petit since the 1970s.

"The way he controlled the audience without any words was really, really powerful," said Vicky Virgin, a Greenwich Village resident who brought her 12-year-old son Danny Brosh to see Petit.

"I was always wondering what it would be like to know him and see him perform," Brosh said. "I didn't even know he was still alive until today."

He's not only alive, but plotting his next big feat of wire-walking. "My next performance will be a high-wire walk on Easter Island," Pettit said