Contact juggling

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Contact Juggling

Contact juggling is the art of juggling without letting the balls leave contact with one's body. Instead, they are rolled around each other (palmspinning), or along the arms and body (bodyrolling).

Alternatively, 'still ball' or 'isolations' which use a solid coloured, or often transparent ball, involve the movement of the hands or arms around the ball, whilst the ball remains stationary. This gives the impression that the ball is fixed to the spot.

Contact juggling in its modern popular form originated with a juggling routine developed by Michael Moschen. Some of the various single ball manipulations (headrolls, for example) existed long before that, but many one and multiple ball manipulations (palmspinning) were developed by Moschen, though some might argue that the Chinese have been palmspinning for centuries. It was also Moschen who pioneered the use of transparent "crystal" balls, which are actually a type of plastic called acrylic.

In the film Labyrinth, David Bowie's character is seen to contact juggle throughout the film. These manipulations were actually performed by Moschen who stood behind Bowie during filming.

Contact Juggling is also known by several other names, including Static Juggling, SpherePlay, Orb Rolling and Dynamic Manipulation (Dynamic Manipulation was actually Moschen's proposed name for the art, but has not been embraced by the community).

The style of juggling has received further popularization through instructional materials and performances developed by jugglers other than Michael Moschen, but which refer to props as well as manipulations that he created and performs. This has led to some contention within the juggling community.

The first book written about the art was simply called "The Contact Juggling Book" and served as the starting point (as it was the only resource other than Moschen's videos) for most contact jugglers in the late 90s.

A second book, Kae's Guide to Contact Juggling, by Kae Verens is freely downloadable from the contactjuggling.org website.

1 Contact juggling community
2 Tension between Contact Jugglers and traditional jugglers
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Contact juggling community

Originally there were very few sites devoted to the art of contact juggling. The online community presence of contact juggling began with a Yahoo! discussion group started by gujamin in late 1999.

Early in 2000, mailing list member Kae Verens proposed a website be created, and registered the domain name www.contactjuggling.org (and coined the motto "Half dance, half juggling, half mime, half magic"). The website very quickly became the focal point for the community.

Gujamin proposed the idea of the contact juggling convention and various locations were proposed, ultimately setting on Florida as the location for the first convention in 2001. The convention was paid for by Contact Juggler "The Ferret".

[edit] Tension between Contact Jugglers and traditional jugglers

Contact Juggling evolved from a landmark dance act called Light, by Michael Moschen. Shortly after his video "Michael Moschen: In Motion" was released, James Ernest, a games developer, wrote the book "Contact Juggling". James may be the originator of the term "Contact Juggling", as Michael did not have a name for what he did (in the credits of the Labyrinth film, for example, he is credited with "crystal ball manipulation"). However, Moschen coined the term "Dynamic manipulation" and unsuccessfully fought to have it adopted by the community.

Many people feel that the book was a move-for-move rip-off of Michael's work. It is true that almost every move in Michael's routine was described in the book, but it is also true that there are moves described in the book which are not in the routine.

Because of this supposed plagiarism, many traditional jugglers started vehemently attacking anyone that tried to learn Contact Juggling, claiming that to do so was to be no better than a copy-cat.

An argument against this is that Contact Juggling is a discipline, and Michael's routine is a specific example of the discipline in action. In traditional juggling, it is not plagiarism to juggle three balls, but it is plagiarism if your entire routine is a move-for-move copy of someone else's routine. In contact juggling, the same rule applies - it is not plagiarism to roll a ball along your arms, but to copy someone's entire routine is most definitely not on.

In 2004, contact juggler The Ferret got hold of Michael's phone number, and called him up to get to the bottom of this. From the phone call, it was reported that Michael was not as adverse to other people contact juggling as the traditional juggling community appeared to believe.