Contact juggling

Contact juggling with a ball

Video of a contact juggling

Contact juggling is a form of object manipulation or juggling in which there is predominantly body contact with the respective object. Contact juggling is performed with balls, rings, hoops, clubs, cigar boxes and fire sticks, among other things.

From Kae Verens, the operator of contactjuggling.org, comes the sentence: "Contact juggling is half dance , half juggling , half pantomime , half magic ..." ("Half dance, half juggling, half mime, half magic ...") which is often used Description of contact juggling is used.

Contact juggling with balls

Contact juggling with four balls

When contact juggling with balls, the contact juggler either lets balls roll over his entire body or over his palms. Another technique that is often used is insulation. Here, the contact juggler moves around a plain or transparent ball in such a way that it looks as if the ball is floating in one place in space.

The current form of contact juggling was mainly shaped by the techniques developed by Michael Moschen . In particular, he was the first to use crystal balls for contact juggling. These are used by many professional contact jugglers today, although most of them are made of acrylic rather than glass.

There are many techniques that count towards juggling contact with balls. For example, the butterfly , in which an arm is swiveled so that the back of the hand and the palm of the hand alternately point upwards, with the ball rolling from the back of the hand over the fingertips to the palm and back again. Another popular technique is the rotating pyramid . Three balls circle on the palm and a fourth lies on top, so that the four balls form a pyramid.

History of contact juggling

Contact juggling became particularly popular through Michael Moschen's performance Light . Shortly after the video 'Michael Moschen: In Motion' appeared in 1991, James Ernest published the English-language book Contact Juggling which ultimately coined the name " Contact Juggling ".

The world's first contact juggling convention took place in Florida in 2001 and was funded by contact juggler The Ferret .