We have announced the beta-testing part of the new website! HOORAY and Welcome!
Our first fortnight theme is: How do you define contact juggling?
Briney and I talk together about what it means to define CJ and the launch of our site.
Did we miss anything? What do you think about the definition of CJ? What should be included, or not? How does that then define your practice? Let us know in the forum!
Hello. I’ve not watched all of this video yet, but here are some vague, half-formed thoughts that I have on the subject.
I think I quite like the name contact juggling, and I think I like it more than ‘ball contact.’ However, I am also prepared to admit that this may be for no better reason than familiarity. I don’t think I agree that the term is limiting either, although perhaps once I’ve watched all of the video I will have a better idea of why you think this.
It’s really interesting (and nice) to hear you discuss the history of contact juggling, and also of contactjuggling.org. I think I started lurking on the site a little after you guys joined, and then maybe joined myself a year or so later. At this point, my knowledge of contact juggling was based mainly on .org, a few other sires and the Contact Juggling Part 1 DVD. As a result I did have a very move-based (or trick-based) notion of contact juggling. I also didn’t realise how new contact juggling was, and how much it was still under development. I basically thought it was a more-or-less complete body of tricks that you could just learn in turn.
I can see why this might be limiting,but I don’t think I ever found it limiting myself. Even back then, with my rather naive notions about contact juggling being a fixed set of tricks, I could tell that different people looked very different and that therefore a huge amount came down to personal style. I suppose I only think that the notion of defined moves is only limiting if it’s so tightly defined as to preclude personal variations (no, that’s not a butterfly, a butterfly has to be exactly like this). I’d concede that a tightly defined notion contact juggling as a whole ,e.g. no holding on the ball, might be more restrictive. But I don’t really ever remember thinking that this was a hard and fast rule.
So, yeah, I’ve never really thought of these labels as restrictive or bad. As for whether they are actually useful, I dunno. I still think the notion of specific tricks is at least a bit useful for introducing basic concepts to beginners, provided people are not too rigid about it. I think it is only restictive if you let it be.