Glossary
From ContactJuggling.org
Back: Kae's Guide to Contact Juggling
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[edit] Glossary
Backarm – the opposite of the forearm.
Body-rolling – a style of contact juggling, which involves rolling the ball over various parts of the body. Usually meant as parts other than the hands and arms.
Butterfly – a movement of the hand where a ball is rolled between the hand and cradle.
Catch – a ball is tossed to a part of the body, and brought to an immediate halt when it reaches it. Popular places to catch at are the elbows, forehead, and neck. Catching in the palms is not really impressive, so isn’t usually done.
Contact Juggling – a form of juggling where the balls are rolled and spun around the body and arms instead of being tossed in the air.
Cradle – a position on the back of the hand where a ball can be held on two or three fingers.
Escape – where one ball is rolled out of a palmspin, and the palmspin continues with the remaining balls.
Flourish – a small movement of the fingers or hands meant to impress subtly.
Flyaway – a move where a ball is tossed from one position to be caught in another.
Hold – a balance where a ball is held in a location around the body. This can be as simple as holding a ball in the palm of the hand, or as tricky as holding a ball on the extreme outside of the elbow.
Inside – the side of something that is closer to the body. If you hold your right arm against the chest, and the left arm against the right arm, the right arm is known as the “inside arm”.
Isolation – a move where at least one ball is held still in space while everything else is in motion. This can be amazing to see.
Line – three or more balls moved so that there are always at least two of them in a straight line. Orbital – one or more balls spun around an isolated ball. The spinning balls seem to “orbit” the stationary one.
Outside – the side of something that is further from the body. If you hold your arm up in a natural position, the soft part of the elbow is nearer to the body, so the pointy side is known as the “outside elbow”.
Palmspin – a style of CJ where multiple balls are spun in circles around each other in the palms of the hands. Some people can spin some patterns upside-down – the pattern is held by the fingers of the hand, which is palm-down.
Pass – a pass is simply when you move balls from one place to another place. Usually, this is either from hand to hand or elbow to elbow, etc.
Stack – three or more balls held so that at least one of the balls is supported by the others and not touched by the hand.
Stall – a pause in a move, where the position of the ball is highlighted. Usually, the ball is held in an awkward hold.
Toss Juggling – the usual form of juggling, where balls are thrown into the air so that there is usually no more than one ball in each hand.
Transfer – a transfer is a pass that keeps a pattern. An example is a 3b Palmspin Transfer, where the Palmspin is obviously still a 3b Palmspin after the transfer.
Walk –a mime that suggests the ball should be moving in a direction yet is isolated. See the various palm-palm, palm-cradle, etc, walks.
Windshieldwiper – the movement the forearm and hand makes when moved in an arc, keeping the elbow in one stationary point.
[edit] Bibliography
There are not many books or videos on this subject, which makes it possibly easier for the aspiring CJer to get almost everything existing on the subject.
[edit] Videos
“The Labyrinth”. Jim Henson’s film contains two scenes of contact juggling – the first has a little butterfly work, and the second is stack work. Michael Moschen does the ball work.
“In Motion with Michael Moschen”. This contains two contact juggling routines by Michael Moschen. The first starts with 8 balls and moves down one by one to 1 ball. The second is a routine with 1 ball. “The Art Of Contact Juggling” by David Pennington. I haven’t seen this video, but have been told that it is a tutorial, teaching a contact juggling style, which can be compared to David Copperfield’s style of magic. “Contact Juggling: Part One” by Greg Maldonado and Owen Edson. This is a tutorial video, which is extremely simple to follow. I’d definitely recommend that every beginning Contact Juggler buy it.
“Sphereplay” by Michael Glenn. Another tutorial, which is different to the above. Michael shows a one ball routine, then goes through it step by step.
[edit] Books/Magazines
Contact Juggling by James Ernest. This book describes almost every move that Moschen has in his routine, but includes a lot of extra moves, and was the basis of the existing CJ community.
Kaskade. This issue contains a very good article about palmspinning, with descriptions of many moves. A pattern with 11 balls is shown. I haven’t seen this pattern performed yet.
[edit] Websites
contactjuggling.org - this is the CJ community’s site. It contains a huge amount of submitted videos, and is almost fully interactive.
www.contactjuggling.com - this is Rich Shumaker’s website. It has a very well done instructional video, some submitted videos, and a lot of forums.
www.peapot.net - this site sells some very good juggling videos. The example clips of the “3b Different Ways” show some excellent examples of contact juggling and toss combinations.
www.shiftys-spheres.com - This is the personal website of Shifty – a CJer who, despite only starting the art about a year previous to starting the website, has come up with some of the more interesting innovations in palmspinning.
www.jugglingdb.com - probably the most comprehensive juggling site on the Internet (mostly toss juggling). This title used to belong to www.juggling.org, but they just don’t seem to have bothered updating in the last few years.
