Juggling

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, contact juggling, and hat manipulation.

Forms of Juggling Performance

For the past hundred years, since the "Golden Age" of vaudeville, variety and circus to the present, a few methods of presenting juggling on stage have survived and remained popular with audiences. These Classic Forms include:

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• The Gentleman Juggler - using everyday objects such as hats, canes, plates, wine bottles and cigars.
• Comedy Juggling - the juggling skill is secondary to the comic character and jokes of the performer.
• Traditional Circus Style - presenting pure skill with precision, skill and panache. Also cultural extensions of this form:
• Chinese Circus - using mainly rings and badminton rackets, fantastic costumes, concentrating on numbers juggling.
• Russian Folk - colourful costumes and characters, unique props with acrobatics.
• Sport themed - the performers dress in sporting attire and juggle sports equipment such as tennis rackets, footballs, or even snooker balls.

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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Juggling convention - Europe

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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.

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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.

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