He may be more than 60 years old, but Will Soto still walks a tightrope three evenings a week, juggling and bantering with crowds as the undisputed star of Key West’s famed sunset celebration at Mallory Square.

In fact Soto, who has the lean physique and quick enthusiasm of a much younger man, is one of the founders of the nightly celebration that draws scores of people to Mallory to watch buskers perform, browse vendors’ wares and applaud the sunset over Key West Harbor.

But just as the sunset gathering wasn’t always such a widely recognized spectacle, Soto wasn’t always an acrobat. He was a New Orleans–based artist, traveling the show circuit, when he was hijacked by a friend after a Coconut Grove art festival (and a few cocktails) and transported to Key West.

“I woke up in the back of his van crossing bridges,” Soto confesses.

He had seen Key West once before, in 1966, when his Navy destroyer escort briefly visited the port. But the second time, 10 years later, the island’s appeal took hold during his first early-morning walk.

“In those days, nothing was really rehabbed,” he recalls. “The houses were all funky and in a state of glorious disrepair. I said, ‘Wow, this is my place — where I want to be for a while.’ I just had some magical feeling about it.”

Almost immediately, Soto discovered Mallory Square and its nightly sunset celebration. At that time, it was simply an eclectic gathering of locals — a handful of artists selling trinkets, fishermen returning from a day on the water, hippies, a few musicians, a lone performing act and whoever else happened to wander by. Once the sun went down, the action began.

“Two or three or four drummers came together, and somebody would bring their guitar or a flute,” Soto says. “People started playing music, doing the limbo and partying, passing around wine and rum. There was a palpable magic in the air — it was the kind of wild, unabashed tropical party that you always wished you could stumble upon.”

The artist from New Orleans was hooked. And shortly, his new home inspired a new profession.

Soto already had a background in gymnastics and an ability to juggle. Tempted by the wide open stage of Mallory Square, he abandoned the visual arts for the performing arts.

“That exchange with the audience … felt so good and so right,” he says of his first attempts at performing. “Everything was so immediate and so magical that it said something to my soul that I needed.”

Fueled by the response from his small audience, Soto learned how to work a crowd. He took his juggling and comic patter to new heights when he ascended a tightrope high above the audience.

As the years passed and Key West’s tourism industry grew, the sunset celebration became a must-see event for virtually every visitor to the island city. Soto helped nurture its development into the internationally recognized “happening” it is today — and his photographed silhouette, standing on the high wire against a blazing sky and the waters of Key West Harbor, became an iconic symbol of the nightly gathering.

More than 30 years after his arrival in Key West, Soto’s trademark ponytail and mustache might be graying, but his body is as trim and limber as ever. His performances still sparkle, though he never imagined he’d be working the wire at his age.

“In fact, I would have told you that a 60-year-old acrobat probably wasn’t a possibility,” he admits. “The only reason my body can still handle what I’m doing is because I work out five days a week. I’m up early and I do kickboxing, tai chi, tae kwon do …”

As well as teaching martial arts, he maintains his physical strength by kayaking with his wife Amy.

Equally strong is his continued passion for Key West.

“There are always a million little things in Key West that are funky and you love,” he says. “Like coconuts falling in your yard that you can pick up and eat, or walking out your door and seeing a three-and-a-half-foot white heron standing in your front yard.”

After three decades of performing for sunset audiences, Will Soto is just as enthusiastic about it as he was when he attempted his first shows.

“I have never lost that love of that spontaneous magic you can create when you’re working with a live crowd,” he states.

For the innumerable people who applaud him at the sunset celebration, that’s very good news.