The Encyclopædia of Ball Juggling

The juggling pattern Mills Mess as illustrated by Dancey on the cover of the 1997 edition

[edit] Introduction

The first page of content has two columns: first, an introduction where Dancey explains his reasons for writing the book and what it is about before writing a little about that particular edition; the second column is headed How to read this book and details aspects on the alphabetical listing and cross-referencing, such as the fact that when another article is referenced it is printed in bold type.

Overleaf are the author's acknowledgements to various contributors and family, including a nod to Haggis McLeod, Dancey's juggling partner since 1984 as part of the comedy juggling act Haggis and Charlie. There then follows a contents page, listing the page number of every article. Finally, before the title page and first article, there is a whole side containing an M. C. Escher-like tessellation pattern of the book's cartoon mascot "Man in the Hat".

[edit] Specialisation

Although billed as an encyclopaedia of ball juggling, the book has a very strong bias towards the art of toss juggling^[8], that is to say where items (e.g. beanbags or balls) are thrown and caught in various ways and patterns. This includes the variant toss juggling known as bounce juggling where items are thrown, bounced off a surface and caught and can be equivalently notated using Siteswap or ladder notation also outlined in the encyclopaedia.

However, there is only scant reference to contact juggling, where items are manipulated without being thrown, and floor juggling.

Furthermore , although discussed infrequently throughout the book, there is little extrapolation of the patterns mentioned for balls (or similar items which can be thrown without spin/orientation being a concern) to clubs, rings or other objects. It would not be until fourteen months later, with the publication of Charlie Dancey's Compendium of Club Juggling that these areas would be explored to a greater extent.

[edit] Dancey's Devilment

One particularly infamous article within The Encyclopædia of Ball Juggling is that of Dancey's Devilment, a trick named eponymously by the author which he describes as "a mythical pattern of brain-bending proportions. It came to me in a dream but the memory of just precisely what it was faded infuriatingly as I woke in the morning." Dancey goes on to describe its similarity to a four-ball Rubenstein's Revenge with the addition of multiplex throws.

Fans of the book have gone on to interpret the description as a real pattern with corresponding SiteSwap notation^[9], something which Dancey himself comments on in the 2005 edition. Some realisations have gone on to be posted on the internet in the form of video or using the Java JuggleAnim applet, one example of which can be found here.

[edit] Differences between editions

The 1997 revised edition made little change to the original core alphabetical section apart from the fixing of a few minor glitches, though the ending to the story Zen and the Pefect Juggler was subtly changed. In addition to this, new appendices were published dealing primarily with juggling theory.

For example, Dancey had previously discussed siteswap and ladder notation in some depth within the main encyclpaedia, but new articles about casual diagrams and mills mess state transition diagrams were added as well as their applications to existing juggling patterns.

Further to this was the SiteSwap Feast, the computer-generated results of a LISP-written request to find all non-redundant workable siteswap sequences between 0 and 99,999.

The 2005 edition incorporated most of the information from these appendices into the main body of the encyclopaedia, which was further expanded by the addition of new articles and further material in existing ones. For example, the world-record breaking juggler Luke Burrage persuaded Dancey to include an article on squeezes (the opposite of multiplexes).^[10]

For this edition, the book's cover was also redesigned and the book was for the first time completely cross referenced with The Compendium of Club Juggling

[edit] The Compendium of Club Juggling

Following the success of The Encyclopædia of Ball Juggling, Dancey was able to write and have published in 1995 (also by Butterfingers) a companion book entitled Charlie Dancey's Compendium of Club Juggling which also took on a collated encyclopaedic format but this time on the specific subject of club juggling. This second book was slightly thicker than its predecessor, largely owing to the increased emphasis on passing patterns. Some intricate solo patterns such as the Boston Mess described in the Encyclopaedia were left out of the Compendium.

The Compendium of Club Juggling from its first edition also had considerable cross-referencing among not only its own pages but also those of its companion book. Later, revised editions of The Encyclopædia of Ball Juggling would also take on this approach.

The last entry in this book was once again a humorous short story regarding the philosophy of juggling, this time entitled Zenith and the Art of Pattern Maintenance.

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Charlie Dancey
• Juggling balls

[edit] External links

• Butterfingers publishers
• Juggling DataBase's JuggleWiki Project