Contact Juggling

Contact Juggling is a physical skill and performance art that is close to juggling, except the balls stay in contact with your body.

It’s much less well known than juggling.

When I saw performers contact juggling in the background in an episode of Deep Space Nine I had no idea what it was called, even, but I thought “That looks great! It must be possible to learn. I’ll do that."

For reference, the episode was “Fascination” and the performer was:

Thomas Wood

A little research led me to the book on Contact Juggling by James Ernest:

Contact Juggling by James Ernst at Amazon

And that was enough to get started.

These days you wouldn’t need the book as much, there is plenty of material on YouTube.

Here is a brief intro.

The Butterfly

The foundational move in contact juggling is called “the butterfly”.

It involves starting with the ball one the back of your hand, then flipping your whole arm over—pivoting at the elbow—while keeping contact with the ball, so it ends up in the palm of the same hand.

The Butterfly Tutorial on YouTube

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It looks and feels magical because you are throwing the ball without letting go of it; it moves in a parabola but you move with it, hiding the throw, and making the whole thing look impossible.

Three Aspects

Contact juggling is mostly a combination of three aspects:

• Exactly matching the movement of the ball to mask what is happening. The Butterfly does this. It’s a throw but you follow it exactly to hide the throw, making it look like magic.
• Cheap tricks. For example, a lot of contact juggling moves involve holding the ball with your palm flat and your thumb obscured by the ball, making it look like the ball is floating.
• Endless hours of practice to pull off moves that should be impossible because they require astonishing control and precision.

This makes it curious to perform, because the audience can’t tell the difference between the cheap tricks and almost-possible moves; they flow together seamlessly. The “endless hours of practice” moves help to convince that the cheap tricks are really magic.

Palm Spinning

The other foundational move I’ll mention is palm spinning.

Palm Spinning

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Palm spinning is almost a hobby all of its own; it starts simple with two balls, but then with adding more balls, stacks and isolations it has enough to keep you busy for years.

The four ball pyramid is an example of something that looks simple but is almost impossible.

Props

The best balls for contact juggling are the clear acrylic ones you can get from any juggling equipment shop; they emphasize the magic look because you can’t see them turning.

Failing that, any hard and reasonably heavy ball works. Definitely not tennis balls, they are too bouncy which makes them hard to control; and don’t use glass, it’s too heavy.

Smaller balls can be used for palm spinning; larger balls work better for large moves like arm and back rolls.

Investment

You can get started with some basic moves with a couple of weeks of daily practice; contact juggling is relaxing and fun. And, it’s unusual enough that people will often ask about it when they see it. Recommended!

The Labyrinth

I would be remiss in my duties as post author if I did not mention the most mainstream place contact juggling has been seen: in the movie Labyrinth, in which David Bowie appears to perform exactly the two moves described above.

In fact the performance was by Michael Moschen:

Inside the Labyrinth: Crystals

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Moschen In Motion

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whose video Moschen in Motion is a truly inspiring look at the world of juggling—covering both contact juggling and bounce juggling, another rare form of the art.

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