In its general sense, juggling can refer to all forms of artful or skillful object manipulation. This includes most prop-based Circus skills such as Diabolo, Devil sticks, Cigar box manipulation, Fire-twirling, Contact juggling, and hat manipulation.
The most recognisable form of juggling is Toss juggling. This is a hub article, a central location which links to related articles. For more in-depth information on a given form of juggling, juggling history or a specific juggling prop, follow the link to the related article.
Jugglers refer to the objects they juggle as props, the most popular being specially made balls, beanbags, rings, clubs, or bouncing balls. Some performers also use "dangerous" objects such as knives and fire torches.
The word "juggling" derives from the Middle English "jogelen", to entertain by performing tricks, in turn from the Old French "jogler" and the Latin "ioculr", to jest, and "iocus", a joke.
The act of juggling pre-dates any recorded history so the exact origins will never be known. The earliest known record of juggling, from the 15th Beni Hassan tomb of an unknown prince, shows female dancers and acrobats throwing balls. Juggling has also been recorded in most other early civilizations including China, India, Greece, Aztec (Mexico) and Polynesia.
In Europe, juggling was an acceptable diversion until the Decline of the Roman Empire, after which it fell into disgrace. Throughout the Middle Ages most histories were written by religious clerics who frowned upon the type of performers who juggled, called 'Gleemen', accusing them of base morals or even practicing Witchcraft. Jugglers in this era would only perform in market places, streets, fairs or drinking houses. They would perform short, humorous and bawdy acts and pass a hat or bag among the audience for tips. Some king’s and noblemen’s bards, fools, or jesters would have been to juggle or perform acrobatics, though their main skills would have been oral (Poetry, Music, Comedy and story telling).
In 1768 Philip Astley opened the first modern Circus. A few years later he employed jugglers to perform acts along with the horse and Clown acts. From then until the modern day, jugglers have found work with and have commonly been associated with circuses.
In the 19th century Variety and Music Hall theatres became more popular, and jugglers were in demand to fill time between music acts, performing in front of the curtain while sets are changed. Performers started specializing in juggling, separating it from other kinds of performance such as sword swallowing and magic. The Gentleman Juggler style was established by German jugglers such as Salerno and Kara. Rubber processing developed and jugglers started using rubber balls. Previously juggling balls were made from balls of twine, stuffed leather bags, wooden spheres or various metals. Solid or inflatable rubber balls meant that bounce juggling was possible. Inflated rubber balls made ball spinning easier and more reaily accessible. Soon, in North America, Vaudeville theatres employed many jugglers, often hiring European performers.
In the early to mid 20th century, variety and vaudeville shows started to decline in popularity due to competition from motion picture theatres, Radio and Television. The International Jugglers' Association was formed in 1947 to support professional jugglers. Their annual conventions became a focus for not only professional but amateur jugglers. Since the 1950's there has been a huge increase in the numbers of amateur jugglers compared to performing professionals leading to a very distinct juggling culture.
Until the early 1950s, juggling was only practiced by performers. Since then more and more people have begun juggling as a hobby. The International Jugglers' Association began as a club for performing jugglers but soon had non-performers joined up and started attending the annual conventions.
As more amateurs around the world began to juggle as a hobby sport or pastime, they started meeting together regularly to practice and socialise in local groups. These groups formed into juggling clubs, and currently there are clubs for jugglers in almost every city and large town in the western world.
When juggling was practiced by professionals only, jugglers were secretive and possesive of their tricks and skills. Over the years the attitude has changed, and juggling has now become a major social activity for hundreds of thousands (or possibly millions) of people all over the world who are more than happy to share their skills and encourage others to join in. This more open approach, and the fact that basic juggling is not that difficult to learn, has made juggling into an activity that almost anyone can participate in. There are many reasons why someone may learn to juggle. These include:
The majority of hobby jugglers can be split into one of two groups. The first are those who learned to juggle at University or college juggling clubs. These people are often mathematicians, scientists and computer programmers. They like juggling because it can be very structured and it can be analysed and modeled easily by maths and physics. Juggling has established itself as a very useful model for researchers studying motor skills and learning techniques. The second group are from the counter culture or Alternative culture scene. They enjoy juggling because, while it can be very structured, it can also be as free as you want it to be, with a virtually infinite scope for individual personal expression. Fire juggling is a common appeal.
Since the 1970s, "Juggling For the Complete Klutz", a book by John Cassidy that is sold with a set of three beanbags attached, has probably introduced juggling to more people than any other single source. Another reason for the increase of people who can juggle is that many businesses and schools have employed professional workshop leaders to teach various Circus skills.
Since the late 1980s a large juggling subculture has developed, almost completely unknown and unrecognised by the general public. The scene revolves around local clubs and organisiations, special events, shows, magazines, websites, internet forums and, possibly most importantly, juggling conventions. In recent years there has also been a growing focus on juggling competitions.
Populating the scene are many "juggling celebrities". These people are notable (or notorius) for being good or creative jugglers, entertaining performers, convention organisers, experts in their field or just for having a curiously interesting personality or character. Of course, outside of the juggling world they are completely unknown.
Most jugglers concentrate on three main props. These are balls, clubs and rings. Many of the same tricks and skills can transfer between the props but there are unique qualities for each.
Ball juggling is probably the most popular prop, as everybody learns with balls first. Ball juggling can be broken down into the following styles: Contact Juggling, Numbers Juggling, Pattern Juggling, Trick Juggling, Technical Juggling, Bounce Juggling and Football Juggling. For the purposes of record keeping and ease of communication, the terms balls and beanbags are generally interchangeable in the juggling world.
Rings are less popular than balls and clubs, mainly because they can be painful to juggle, and many jugglers find them more restrictive. The most popular styles of ring juggling are Numbers Juggling and Technical Juggling.
Clubs (sometimes called "pins" because they look like Bowling pins) are very popular with solo jugglers. They spin when they are thrown and are more stable in the air than balls. The more popular styles of club juggling are Numbers Juggling, Trick Juggling, Technical Juggling and Club Swinging.
other there a many arts that involve manipulating objects but not throwing them up that are related to juggling, such as diabolo (an hourglass shaped object manipulated with a string), devilsticks (a baton manipulated by two shorter batons), and cigar boxes (rectangular boxes, usually used in groups of three)
Instead of juggling on their own, a juggler will often find a friend or two and throw props about as a pair or group.
When club passing, two or more jugglers share a juggling pattern between them, usually facing each other. Passing has lots of forms and is by far most popular using clubs. The most popular are numbers passing, passing and doing tricks, passing in large groups, experimenting with new and complex patterns and working on high level technical routines.
There are a few other ways two or more people can juggle together. These include Sharing/Siamese/Buddy Juggling, where two jugglers stand side by side juggling half the pattern using one hand each; Stealing, where one person juggles a regular pattern and another person takes away all the props, keeping the pattern intact, leaving the first juggler with nothing; Takeouts (sometimes also called Stealing), where single props are stolen from another juggler's pattern and returned without either juggler missing a beat.
Each of these records are what is known as a "flash", meaning each prop is thrown and caught only ONCE. Some jugglers, and some juggling competitions, do not consider a flash to be "real juggling" and use "qualifying juggle" (a term taken from the International Jugglers' Association's Numbers Competition) to denote a pattern where each prop is thrown and caught at least TWICE. The JISCON records for qualifying runs are:
There are other jugglers who have equaled or bettered these records but have not submitted video evidence to the JISCON. These non-verified records stand at:
One other solo (non-passing) record that must be mentioned is the bounce juggling record. This is tracked by the Bounce Juggling World Record page, which styles itself on the JISCON page, and also only lists records with video evidence. These records are:
The JISCON page only tracks club passing records. The top records stand at:
The Bounce Page tracks bounce passing records. The top records stand at:
Ball passing records are not officially tracked by any site. However, the top records currently stand at:
During the last quarter of the 20th century, many jugglers saw a way to use their skills as a form of artistic expression. They put aside the goals of popular entertainment for the masses, and instead sought out new ideals, something more than just juggling. Modern juggling begins again from first principles, abandoning traditional definitions and systems of creating new work. This dismissal of tradition also involves the rejection of conventional expectations, stressing freedom of expression and experimentation. The most experimental presentations of modern juggling often startles and alienates audiences unused to the bizarre and unpredictable. Even so, the avant-garde approach has been very influential to the rest of the juggling world. Many performers working in traditional venues such as variety and circuses now mix modern juggling ideas into their acts.
Modern juggling artists use their physical object manipulation (juggling) skills in combination with various performance concepts that can include patterns based on numerical sequences, character work, theatre, new props and obects, or working in new environments and staging. Some would say that Modern juggling is now so well accepted by juggling audiences that it is no longer avant-garde. In Juggling convention shows in Europe, modern juggling is just as popular as the classic forms of juggling, if not more so.
In the past ten years a new type of juggling performer has emerged. They aren’t full-time, professional jugglers and they don’t create work for a non-juggling audience. Instead they perform exclusively at juggling conventions, to other people who share their own understanding of juggling performance and culture. This environment has produced a new style of juggling performance know as Postmodern Juggling.
Where Modern performers hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art, Postmodern performers embrace diversity. They reject the rigid boundaries and favour eclecticism, the mixing of ideas and forms. Postmodern performers use references to other jugglers, other performers, other parts of juggling culture or even to their own previous performances. This could be in the form of recognizable tricks, styles, characters or ideas. A postmodern juggling act taken out of context, to an audience of non-jugglers, could not be presented as a stand-alone work of art; instead it relies on knowledgeable audience members to find the meaning behind the act for themselves. Postmodern juggling performance also blurs the line between “mass entertainment” and “high art”. The artistic expression is in the repetition and distortion of currently accepted forms of performance. While the mindset of the performers are very different, most juggling audiences make no distinction between Modern and Postmodern juggling acts, they simply see both as Modern.
During the early growth of movies, Radio and Television, juggling, as a form of popular entertainment, suffered more than other variety acts. Music and comedy transferred very easily to radio but juggling, being mostly physical, didn’t. In the early years of TV, when variety-style programming was very popular, jugglers were often featured, but developing a new act for each new show, week after week, was impossible. Comedians and musicians can pay others to write their material but jugglers can’t get other people to learn new material for them.
Variety Theatres still do business in Europe, particularly Germany. In North America the closest thing to variety shows are in casinos, in places like Las Vegas, where jugglers perform alongside singers, comedians and others. As with circuses, the demand for jugglers to perform in variety theatres and casinos is far lower than jugglers seeking work, meaning only the best, most dynamic performers find regular work in the top venues. Germany and the USA have also produced some of the greatest jugglers from the past 50 years, most notably Francis Brunn from Germany and Anthony Gatto from America.
Rennaisance and Medieval Fairs in North America and in Europe can also offer short-term performance venues for professional jugglers. With the increasing popularity of such venues (and with the continued success of Medieval/Rennaisance themed restaurants) the ancient art of juggling finds a home since it is certainly ancient but can still be quite entertaining.
Diagram based notations are the clearest way show juggling patterns on paper, but as they are based on images, their use is limited in text based communication (email and the internet). Ladder Diagrams track the path of all the props through time, where the less complicated Causal Diagrams only track the props that are in the air, and assumes that a juggle has a prop in each hand. Mills Mess State Transition Diagrams track the position of the hands during the pattern, but not the pattern of the props.
Numeric based notation systems are more popular and standardised than diagram based notations. They are used extensively in both a written form, and for those "fluent" in juggle-speak, in normal conversation.
Siteswap is by far the most common juggling notation. In its most basic form, Vanilla Siteswap, it is very easy to use, as each pattern is reduced to a simple sequence of numbers, such as "3", "97531" or "744". However, vanilla siteswap can only notate the most basic alternating two-handed patterns, with no deviations from a very strict set of rules. If one of these rules is broken, say an extra hand is added, the same string of numbers will result in a wildly different pattern than first conceived. For more slightly more complicated patterns, extra rules and syntax are added to create Synchronous Siteswap, to notate patterns where both hands throw at the same time, and Multiplex Siteswap, to notate patterns where one hand holds or throws two balls on the same beat.
Vanilla, synchronous and multiplex siteswap are the "standard" forms of siteswap, not only understood by many jugglers, but also many computer programs capable of animating juggling patterns. Other extensions to siteswap have been developed for specific purposes, though these are far less common than the "standard" forms of siteswap, understood by far fewer jugglers and only specialized software. These extensions include Passing Siteswap, Multi-Hand Notation (MHN) and General Siteswap (GS).
Beatmap is a relatively new numeric notation. It notates every "hand" on every beat during a pattern, unlike all forms of siteswap, which only notates each hand on every other beat. This means that beatmap can notate any number of hands or juggling prop and in any rhythm with no added complexity. Beatmap doesn't only notate throws, but also the time and place of each catch. By including a simple indication of crossing and uncrossing arms, beatmap can notate Mills Mess style patterns. Within beatmap it is also possible and easy to notate not only the balls in a pattern, but also the hands or arms of the juggler, as well as the position, location or orientation of the body of a juggler. Luke Burrage, the inventor of beatmap, claims that beatmap can more accurately describe more patterns than all ladder diagrams, causal diagrams, mills mess state transition diagrams, vanilla siteswap, synch siteswap, passing siteswap and multi-hand notation combined. So far use of beatmap is very limited, as most jugglers and all juggling software understand only variations of siteswap.