ContactJuggling.org

Drew · Joined: 29 Jun 2024 Posts: 989 Location: Bristol UK

Mmmmm Marmite is lush
Nutella is lush too
I'm bispreadable you see

RaRanax · Joined: 10 Mar 2024 Posts: 72 Location: Portland

I feel inclined to my two cents. (don't read most of this, does not make sense)
A few days ago I had a very good talk about this sort subject with a blind magician after his show.
To some magicians any type of magic or slight of hand is juggling, only mental magic is true magic. People have problems with contact juggling as juggling, how many times have you heard: "but he/she is not throwing the ball!"? There are pattern jugglers and there are number jugglers.
We all must juggle to please ourselves and our audiences. The elevator gets OOs and Ahhs from and audience, but getting smoothly into a fist hold simply gets a look of interest. How many hours of practice to these tricks take to become proficient? I know I got the elevator in about ten min and the fist hold over a week.
I find that dancing when I juggle is just fun. I do not do it to impress I do it because I like it. I agree that I can dance better and have more fun with more practice and I enjoy the practice, I win both ways.

I think the best jugglers are the ones who find the middle ground. the ones who can pander to their audiences and still learn new and amazing tricks. Like the blind magician said: for the audience the tricks are immaterial, unless your audience are all magicians, it is your audience that hold them.
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quarter dance, quarter juggling, quarter mime, quarter magic....I'm a contact juggler, and a math major.

daydream · Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2024 8:51 am Post subject:

The Manipulator · Joined: 13 May 2024 Posts: 54

The Manipulator · Joined: 13 May 2024 Posts: 54

This is interesting reading and I've been trying to decide whether to comment. I see someone keeping the wasp nest stirred, because they like reading the responses, or someone that doesn't know when to apologize and bite their tongue. Either way it's no skin off my teeth. Anything you do that has been done is not copying, you're just doing something your way. If you do 2 things at the same time it is something new. I like to twirl knives around my fingers, roll them around my hands, etc. When I had only 3 acrylics and I was waiting for a shipment, I had the need to work with both hands so I began twirling a knife in one hand while spinning with the other. You tell my brain that wasn't new. I had one half concentrating on spinning and the other half concentrating on twirling and flipping and I guarantee it was new. I gave it up though, because it is hard to spin balls with bandages on your hands. I'm not smart enough to use a dull knife. I have to use the sharpest one I can find.

silver · Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2024 12:53 pm Post subject:

the 6 ball flower has been done single handedly, i've seen it done once. took the guy(sorry no name) several years to get. i did have some extremely bad footage at one time.

it is possible!

I also heard a pool table fixing guy tell me his mate could do a 3 level 10 ball stack with pool balls one handed. i'd put a truth estimate at 50/50.

it may be possible.........
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...create pointless acts of beauty.

Drew · Joined: 29 Jun 2024 Posts: 989 Location: Bristol UK

OT: palmspinning
4 in one hand with 4" balls
5 with 80mm
6 in one hand is smooth with 2.5" balls (the other guy who does this is John, he showed me it first about 5 years ago!)
and flat 7 flower in one hand with 2" balls a not so smooth, but it turns
And I have tricks using 9, 10 and 11 3" acrylics in 2 hands.

At the moment, with small balls I have a way to spin 11 2" balls in one hand in a 3 layer pyramid, but only if I cheat !!! I think it is possible though,
but I don't like to work much with small balls !

Dancing with 4 is great though

The Manipulator · Joined: 13 May 2024 Posts: 54

Ryan · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2024 9:15 pm Post subject:

<Bump>
Look at the beginning of the thread.
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Circus 2.0

Colin · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2024 9:58 pm Post subject:

Hmmmm, good call.
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With practice, Contact juggling is as good as a Ungody Sphereplay nose fight inside a post box

Arnar · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2024 11:15 pm Post subject:

hmm. very interesting. ive been working on this niffty little body roll for a bout 2 days with my brand new 100mm blue mr.babache stage ball( greatest ball ever! i havent touched my arcrylics or dube since i got it).

its starts off like a chest roll, but then you catch with your chin and let it roll down your body onto your knee , then from there scoop it up with your cradle, or pop the ball back up with your knee. its kinda cool. and sticks mans crazy little head triangle thing i freaking awesome too. i can kinda do it, but its very very very choppy.
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Look!_This_Chånges! · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2024 11:48 pm Post subject:

*sigh*

Arnar, where did that come from? This isn't the 'I'm working on this move' thread...

My idea:

I'm trying to explore all these things. Multiball, Bodyrolling, and Isolationism (see, I used it's new cool name ).

Isolation, to me, is all about illusion. Nothing more. I find the rest of my body will add to, or increase this illusion. I watch Ryan, Nika, Colin, Drew - pretty much any Isolationist and see that this theory is right. Therefore, by wanting to incorporate my body into the isolation with waves, movement, dance etc, I feel I AM evolving this part of Contact Juggling. [EDIT] I just realised that sound can be used to increase the illusion as well. Those silly robot-esque noises we all make? Why I didn't put his in my post before, I don't know...

Body rolls. Hmm... You roll the ball around your body. That's all there is to it (Speaking in Laymens terms). How can this theory be progressed further? I can't see that the fundamental idea can be pushed further than it already is. However, I like to learn to roll the ball in all sorts of places. I've tried rolling the ball down my legs etc. (There is even a very old Video of me trying this on Youtube...) To me, getting crazy hard body rolls isn't pushing the idea further. It's exploring it, but not pushing it further.

Multiball. To be honest, I'm still at the 'Boring Multiball' stage, so I can't really speak on how to progress this further. IMO, from my own experience of other contact Jugglers, Drew is the Oracle on many balls. Ask him. He'll just say 'it'll be released soon'

My goal as a contact juggler, is to be able to mix all three forms of CJ, successfully, and make it look astounding. It'll be so many years before I even get close to this, but I like the idea of a challenge. You'll notice in the video I recently put out, It wasn't pure isolation. It was playing. I tried to mix in different aspects, like some rolling and isolation. Some worked, some didn't. Oh well. I like to have fun. I love silly moves, moves that make people laugh. CJ, to me, is all about entertainment.I don't wanna just sit there in awe (although that would be pretty cool) I want to add some laughter in there as well, make it seem less of a formal 'watch me do cool and amazing stuff' show, I want a 'play along with me, see my enjoyment' show, as well as the element of 'Wow'... I'm not saying I want to be a clown. I'm saying, add a childish element in there too. Add some cheese. Give the ball more character. The body waves do this (for me) by adding an extra 'invisible force' into the fun.

Yes, I bite something from EVERYBODY I see. I've not been Contact Juggling long (about 16 months now) so I like a little help with what I'm doing. I bite stuff, sometimes change it to suit me, sometimes don't. No big deal. To me, CJ isn't a 'stop copying me' thing, it's a 'try this, and see what you can do with it, See if you can show me some new paths with it'. I heard Colin say once: Contact moves aren't created, they're discovered. That may be a quote of someone else, but I heard Colin say it.

I hope you can see what I mean... :shrug: I can be a bit vague sometimes when putting my point across...
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With practice, You too could be like Ryan Mellors...

Arnar · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2024 12:00 am Post subject:

im just saying that leg work is possible... and ballguy as a video ( logical fallacy) that shows him doing it
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Colin · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2024 12:35 am Post subject:

*sign* We have established that you can roll a ball anywhere to (just about) anywhere on your body. Forget that for a moment.

I agree with LTC's bit on bodyrolling......
I'm a bodyroller and am exploring new stuff, right. Although I can't find any new parts of my body that have previously escaped my attention. *does a quick once over* nope still have 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 body and 1 head. So what am I supposed to do? Grow a new limb?

This is where that movement of the body, placement, timing, dance, grace, style, character ect stuff comes in. The bigger concepts. (for anyone who cared to read my stupidly long winded posts in this thread) Thats the cutting edge in rolls. Not new moves, though new moves are always welcomed I have been working on one myself for awhile....And BIG respect to peoples out there working on foot to hand rolls

But then its appears that bodyrolls suffer quite badly from the reeling off of tricks upon tricks after more tricks dilemma. Theres not a great deal of context. Just a collection of fancy tricks, If your very very lucky its loosely formulated into some kinda meaningful or logical structure. But hardly ever is very deep or fullfilling. So there lies another of those big chalanges...

As for the dancey stuff:
I'm ripping off every dance form under the sun too. I found its forced me to develope *new* manipulation techniques and reformat things in contact to fit in that style or context. Basicly by exploring this area I have stumbled onto actual tricks or gained better understanding of larger concepts that I would have never of seen. And my awareness of my body controll I learnt from it has gone straight back into my contact and made it much better. So yeah its been worth exploring. And those tuts are the funnest thing I've learnt in a long time.

BUT

it is an alarming trend isn't it!

More bodyrolls please!
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With practice, Contact juggling is as good as a Ungody Sphereplay nose fight inside a post box

Arnar · Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2024 1:23 am Post subject:

hmm. rythmic gymnastics just crossed my mind. they seem to have explored everything.....

now if we can laern from them...
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