Cigar box (juggling)

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Cigar boxes are a kind of popular juggling prop, popularised by W C Fields, which can be used for various tricks, including high-speed box exchanging midair, balancing tricks, and more. Cigar Boxes are the standard element of a gentleman-juggler style routine. Most of the tricks are done with three boxes; very few jugglers perform tricks with more than three boxes in their routines.

As the name suggests cigar boxes are shaped exactly as their namesake, although nowadays they are padded on the ends and sometimes the sides, generally with a felt like material.

Rather than the 'flowing' style of the more traditional ball juggling cigar boxes have what is often referred to as a 'stop-and-start' style. In effect what this means is that after the majority of tricks the boxes return to the home position (three or more boxes in a line, smallest ends together) and stop before the juggler starts the next trick.

Most cigar box tricks are achieved, from the home position, by 'bouncing' up and down (bodily, normally from the knees, keeping arms in the same place relative to the body) - the trick being started at the apex of the 'bounce' and the boxes being pinned in the home position on the downstroke, preferably at the same altitude as they started at. This leads to the visual effect of the boxes being connected by an invisible wire (in tricks where the boxes not involved in the trick are separate - see take-out below) or it can, and is often, perceived that the boxes are magnetic in some way (where two boxes remain 'stuck' together in the air - see end round below). Of course these are just optical illusions and no such thing occurs in reality.

In 1977, Kris Kremo set a Guinness World Record of releasing one box and catching it after a quadruple pirouette, while in 1994, Kristian Kristof broke the record by releasing all three boxes and catching them after a quadruple pirouette.

The world record for the most Cigar Boxes balanced is 211 boxes, for 9 seconds.

[edit] Some basic tricks

Quarter turn - Turn one of the end boxes 90°, then pin

Half turn - Turn one of the end boxes 180°, then pin

Middle spin - Use the outside boxes to spin the middle box 180° before catching it again. Possible in 3 different planes of rotation, its generally called a helicopter when done in the horizontal plane

Grip change - refers to a number of tricks whereby the performer changes the position/orientation of his/her hands (such as changing from holding a box on top to holding it on the bottom) and can be done either gripping or releasing boxes.

Take out - achieved by taking the middle box (either of the middle boxes if an even number) down out of the home position and bringing it round to become an outside box, which outside side being governed by which hand was used to take the middle box out (left-left, right-right). The hand used should move in a complete circle. From the left hand, for example, you start at 9 o'clock, release the outside box, grab the middle box at 3 o'clock and bring it back round to 9 o'clock.

Lift out - Like a takeout, only that the middle box is lifted upwards around the (former) end box

Hand across - Hand an end box to the other hand, then use it to pin

End round - similar in style to the take-out. From home position, 'bounce up' and bringing the left-hand (as an example, it is of course possible to do this trick with either hand) across to grab the far right box and bringing it round to be pinned as the new left box in the home position. NB this can also be done as an End Over, in an equivalent manner to the Take Over.