Page 31 Winter 1991 - 92
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If
you have the simultaneous box working, try having
all four jugglers throw left-to-Ieft doubles at the same
time. Throw the left doubles from
as far to the right as possible, and throw them a bit
outside, again to keep that little square in the middle (now really
a rhombus) as big as possible. If the four doubles work, try
following four doubles
immediately with four triples (from the right
hand, and keep them outside as usual). It's very
pretty when it works.
Another
nice variation is to do a 3-ct, or even a 1-ct,
simultaneous box. Here you'll get to practice
passing from outside with your left hand as well as your
right. In this case, to keep the passes locked
together, pass at the same time as the person on your right
when you're passing right handed
and as the person on the left when passing left handed, at
least for the 3-ct. For the 1ct, it may be all you can do to watch
and pass with just the person on the right. The
Y The
Y is another passing formation that can be used to make easy or more
challenging patterns. The Y has one person facing two, as if to feed
them, but with a fourth person directly behind the first person (see
Fig. 7). The basic Y has the rear person (0 in the figure) passing
to the person on the right, who passes to the person in the middle.
The middle person passes to the person on the left, who passes back
to the rear person. You can start with a 4-ct and work up to a 2-ct,
3-ct or 1-ct.
There
are two long passes in the Y, namely those to and from the rear
juggler. Be sure not to over spin them.
The
middle person has an interesting position since the incoming and
outgoing passes cross. This shouldn't cause any problem, although
it might take a minute to get used to.
A
general key to making good passes is to glance at the exact spot
where you want your pass to go
(usually just outside the shoulder of the catcher) just before you
make your pass. This applies especially when you're having to look
back and forth, as everybody does in the Y.
The
3-ct Y is interesting because only four clubs
are passed, one on each segment of the pattern, while the
other eight stay home, two with each juggler. This assumes you pass
right handed to one person and left handed to another (see Fig. 8).
Restarting
a Juggling Pattern In
six-club passing,
if you stop juggling to pick up drops and you have four clubs, do
you toss a club to
your partner so that you each have three before restarting? That
special toss of a club wastes time when you could have been
juggling!
Instead,
you can just start passing immediately with the extra club and then
slip back into the normal pattern. This four-club, two-club start
works with any pattern, a l-ct, 2-ct, 3-d, 4-ct, slowfast or
whatever.
Not
only does this let you make that first toss part of the pattern, but
it lets you start the pattern sooner. Many people do an
"up/down" start, or at least a "back/pass" start,
to start passing. But if one person has four clubs, that person can
just start as soon as both people are looking, because the person with
two clubs doesn't have to start until one count later. This saves time
by eliminating the need for an up/down start.
Restarting
a Box The
four-club, two-club start can make other situations easier too.
Suppose that four people are doing a box (alternating or
simultaneous). If one pair drops a club and wants to jump back into
the continuing box pattern, the easiest way to synchronize the restart
is for one juggler to have four clubs and just do a fast start at the
right time. Restarting
with More
Clubs The
idea of the four-club, two-club start can be readily extended to a
five-club, one-club start, or even a six-club, zero-club start. In
these cases, two or three clubs, respectively, will be passed by one
person before the other person starts passing. If
you're doing a 4-ct (every others) or 3-ct, however, you'll have to
adjust a little because you normally have to do selves from both hands
before the second pass, and that won't work in a
three-club cascade with four or five clubs. So in that case, just make
an extra pass or two to your partner (as in a 2-ct or l-ct) before
dropping into your regular pattern.
If
you pass clubs in performance, these unusual starts can be used to
your advantage. Many jugglers like to end a pattern with one person
catching all the clubs (stacking up). So why not then start up a new
pattern from that position, where one person has all the clubs? You
just need a way to hold all the clubs such that you can pull them out
and pass them one at a time. Restarting
a Feed When
a feed stops because of drops, there's no need to make sure each
person has three clubs before you start up again. If the feeder has
four, just start passing with the feedee who has two (who just waits).
That's easy. If a feedee has four
and the feeder has two, that's easy too - the feeder just
"starts" with that feedee (by waiting while the feedee
passes).
But
what if the feeder has three, one feedee four and the other feedee
two? Here's our rule. Clearly the feedee with four should start
passing to get rid of the extra club, but the feeder already has
three. So the feeder passes at that same time to the feedee having
only two clubs (who waits, of course). Then the feeder passes next to
the other feedee (who had had four) and continues alternating passes
as usual in a feed. The trick is that the four-club feedee simply has
to throw two passes in a row at the start. In
Conclusion... We've
described some simple passing possibilities that can be made
interesting for any level of passing expertise. And the above uneven
starts can be done in any pattern. Use them and you'll spend more time
juggling and less time getting ready to. If
you have any comments or suggestions for Juggler's Workshop, write to:
Juggler's Workshop; Palo Alto, CA or call Martin Frost. |