Nomadic Juggling Festival

The Nomadic Juggling Festival will be held Nov 9-11, 2007, in San Luis Obispo, CA, USA.

Given how much I enjoyed the Berkeley Juggling Festival, and how much I like San Luis Obispo, I think I’m going.

Static vs Dynamic Balance

Definitions first.

Static balance is when you have a place where the ball will naturally rest (e.g. the palm of your hand), and you don’t need to do anything to keep it there. Dynamic balance is when you need do constantly adjust to keep the ball where you want it, for example on the top of your head (not on a flat spot, or indentation).

I’ve been working on rolling to the static spot on my outer elbow, and I’ve gotten reasonably (50%) good at it. But one side effect is I’ve gotten MUCH better at dynamic balance on my arms. If I miss the spot on my elbow by an inch or two, I can roll it back to where I want it to go.

I’ve also gotten much better at just rolling the ball up to my shoulder, and back to my hand, even though I haven’t been practicing that.

Berkeley Juggling Festival

I went to the Berkeley Juggling Festival on Saturday. I wish I’d had more time, I had a blast. Contact juggling class from Greg Maldonado. I got to see Vova Galchenko juggle, too, which was astonishing. I’ll try to get some pictures up.

I picked up a copy of Multiball Contact by Drew Batchelor. I haven’t done any multiball yet, I’ll have to get a few more acrylics. But right now I plan on continuing to practice single ball for a while. There’s only so much practice time in a day.

One of the things Greg talked about in the class was tossing the ball to a rest point (e.g. an elbow). I’d never tried, but I was actually able to do it, both to the inside of the elbow, and to the outside of the elbow. It surprised me that I could almost immediately, as I hadn’t tried tossing to a resting place before. One more trick. One more trick which I now need to practice a thousand times, as I can do it occasionally now, not consistently.

Two hands

I’m starting to work on two handed contact juggling. I can do a butterfly with two hands/two balls at once, but I can’t do much beyond that.

I’m working on doing two elbow stalls simultaneously, but right now that just means dropping. As an intermediate step, I’m just trying to keep one ball balanced on the back of my hand, while I do moves with the other hand. That’s still challenging, but I’ve only been trying for two days

How do other people start learning to do things two handed? Particularly two different tricks at the same time.