THE FOUR-CLUB TO THREE-CLUB-AND­CHIN-BALANCE TRANSITION

For all you  four-club jugglers, this is an impressive move requiring a month or so of practice to master. I first saw Steve Mills do it flawlessly at Lheith's summer juggling get-together in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and I was lucky enough to pull it off in competition at the Delaware convention. It provides a nice wrap-up for a club routine. (I use the notation from Carlo's The Juggling Book in the following description.)

The move involves doing a number of things at once: placing one club with precision on your chin while putting the remaining clubs into a normal cascade pattern (from a previous two and two four-club pattern), and then maintaining both at once.

As any experienced juggler knows, if you concentrate too much on one thing when you're first trying to learn a complex trick like this, you'll blow everything else involved. Thus, I found that if I concentrated too much on placing the club on my chin, the two and two to cascade transition went haywire, and vice-versa.

So the trick is best mastered by the logical approach Carlo teaches: breaking up the move into its component parts and learning them individually before trying the whole shebang. Needless to say, all basic four-club patterns (alternate fountain and columns, unison fountain and columns) and a steady chin balance should be mastered before trying to learn the move.

To get the three-club-chin-balance, first try doing a regular cascade with your head and body tilted back a

little staring upwards as if you were balancing a club there. You should be able to gauge your tosses and catches as the clubs pass through the bottom of your field of vision.

Once you've got that, balance a club on your chin and toss another back and forth between your hands. Then two, and then three, as if re-learning the basic cascade. You'll find this most aggravating to practice. To get the precision chin placement, do two clubs in your better hand. Catch one and put it on your chin as quickly as possible, letting the other one drop at first if.you must. Be able to do this with time to spare to catch the other club, meanwhile

maintaining the balance without having to move your feet.

With all this behind you, it won't be hard to juggle four clubs, putting one on your chin and catching the rest. Then juggle them in a cascade.

For those of you who'd rather not go further, this is impressive enough -- a nice dramatic pause before your final move.

Mastery of a couple of exercises using three clubs in a two and one pattern will enable you to perform this transition without stopping. Assuming you are right­handed, do a two and one juggle with the two in your left hand. As the two clubs come down side by side, switch over to the regular double-spin cascade, simultaneously tilting your head back and glancing upwards as if you were balancing a club there. Now do two and one with the two in your right hand. As the two come down together, the one in your right hand goes to your chin, while simultaneously

the one in your left -- then right again crosses over into a cascade pattern. 

(You might want to try this with just the two together first.)

 Now try the whole thing. It will be a snap, especially (at least for me) if you do it out of a unison fountain pattern. I figured out these steps as I went along, and managed to blunder my way to shakey proficiency with the move in a month and a half or so. May it not take you that long!

David Low Providence, RI

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