Meet the world's fastest foot juggler, who travelled the world to train with the best

On 3 December 2025, foot juggler Emma Phillips took to the stage at the Lafayette in London, UK, where she performs with the Sabrage cabaret. This wasn't her usual act, however – the house lights were up, the tables were empty and she was wearing workout clothes instead of her usual flamboyant sequined costume.

That day, her aim was to demonstrate the athleticism and determination that underpins the glitz and glamour. In front of her two official witnesses – stage manager Anna Francesca Tonna and roller-skating aerialist Christian Nimri – Emma claimed the Guinness World Records title for the most foot juggling spins of a table in 30 seconds. The slow-motion footage confirmed that she had achieved a dizzying 77 rotations before the time ran out.

Emma and other circus stars can be found inside Guinness World Records 2027!

Early inspiration

Emma Phillips caught the performance bug when she was just three years old, attending dance classes in her home town of Whangarei, a small city on New Zealand's remote Northland Peninsula. She stuck with dance for years, and her heart would likely have remained set on that career if it weren't for an inspiring night at the circus.

In 2005, when Emma was 15, her family went on a trip to Auckland to see the Cirque de Soleil show Quidam. She was transfixed by the performances – "I don’t think I blinked the whole time!", she remembers – and immediately turned her attention to circus skills.

She earned a general circus-arts diploma in Christchurch before a chance encounter with another Cirque du Soleil performance, this time on TV, introduced her to the traditional Chinese art of parasol juggling. Rather than try to explain this delicate art, here's one of Emma's performances with Sabrage in London last year.

Training with the masters

Problem was, this wasn't a skill anyone could teach in New Zealand. So despite having no ability to speak Mandarin, Emma set off for China, where she enrolled at the Beijing International Arts School. She worked through her culture shock, learning both her craft and a new language, but eventually decided that she would need to find an even more exacting set of teachers if she was to live up to her own perfectionist standards.

This was how, in 2012, she found herself at the gates of the Wuqiao Acrobatics School in Hebei, China's most prestigious training centre for circus arts (high praise in a country that takes circus performance very seriously). She still barely spoke the language, and was far too old (the school's students typically start as young as four and graduate at 16) but the teachers agreed to let her join.

She trained for nearly three years in China, at first just working on parasol juggling. She saw other students practising with tables, but was initially too nervous to give it a go herself: "I honestly thought that it wasn't something I would ever be able to do, just because it was so powerful and strong, and those are two things I had never really been. So I actually saw it as a challenge, to push myself as far out of my comfort zone."

The routine was strict, and the exercises gruelling. The custom-made tables used for these performances weigh about 10 kilograms (22 lbs), which is light for a piece of furniture, but very heavy for a thing you're tossing into the air directly above your face. "Juggling a table is definitely dangerous", Emma told GWR, "especially when you're learning. In the training stage, there were definitely a few moments, but I do my best to learn from those and, it makes me a stronger performer".

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Perfecting her act

With her training complete, in 2014 Emma started her career as a professional table & parasol juggler. On stage, she draws not only on her Chinese training, but on her love of Jazz-age showgirl chic: "I made all my own costumes, and I do my own props."

Emma's career has taken her all over the world. She's performed at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, on cruise ships and circus festivals, and since 2025 at the Sabrage cabaret in London. Despite her glitzy day-job, the chance to earn a GWR title was still something she immediately jumped at. "I used to read the Guinness World Records books", she says, "Our school library used to get them each year, and I remember always going through them but never imagined that I would be in them. So this is definitely a childhood dream".

So what's next for Emma? She thinks she'd be hard pressed to improve on her table-spinning record – "I actually think I maxed out at 77, because I did two attempts and that was exactly what I got both times!" – but she won't rule out some other GWR titles, perhaps with her parasols. "I definitely would recommend people attempt a record title. I think having a goal and working towards it is always motivating."

Read about Emma's table-flipping journey and much more in Guinness World Records 2027 – on sale worldwide now!