BOOKS

 

Charlie Dancey's Compendium of Club Juggling. By Charlie Dancey; published by Butterfingers (Bath, England), ISBN 1-898591-14-8, 235 pp. In the US, available from Serious Juggling and from Infinite Illusions for about $26; in the UK, from Butterfingers for £14.95.

 

This brand new book by Charlie Dancey is the very good club juggling companion to his 1994 book, The Encyclopaedia of Ball Juggling. Once again the entries are in alphabetical order to facilitate your following the cross references that permeate the book.

 

The book explains solo club work, passing patterns, numbers juggling, trick throws, trick catches, combinations, starts, endings, siteswaps, terms, etc. It ends with a story about juggling and learning. Siteswap notation is defined and frequently used to describe throws - if you're siteswap illiterate, you can easily get up to speed by reading the siteswap entry. Causal diagrams and ladder notation are also defined and used well to display timing. (For samples from the Compendium, see the Juggler's Workshop article in this issue.)

 

The friendly style of the explanatory text and cartoons makes the book pleasant reading while still supplying a wide range of instructional material in its approximately 200 entries or 800 things to learn! You can just flip through the book to quickly find something of interest, which will probably lead you to other related topics or patterns.

 

I expect that you'll find some unfamiliar terminology in this book. For instance, it calls "staggered doubles" what I call "seven doubles" - the normal way of passing seven. But such terminology is fairly well defined and can be useful to the juggling community, at least where it doesn't attempt to replace well-established terms. (Of course, in the juggling community almost every thing has two or more more names, as things keep getting reinvented and renamed everywhere.)

 

There is no preponderance of passing patterns presented, though most of the common ones are included, as well as a few unusual ones. If you're strictly into passing and are already well established at that, then there won't be a lot of new stuff here for you, though no doubt some. But you might get the book for its nice drawings, philosophizing, ideas and because it is bound to be a classic.

by Martin Frost

VIDEOS

 

The 1995 Las Vegas Festival Highlights. Produced by Alan Plotkin Productions. Approx. Price: $35.00, plus 10% for shipping (additional $2.00 for outside US shipping. PAL format is $5.00 extra). Also available: 1995 Las Vegas IJA Championships (every performance unedited). Order from IJA, Montague MA.

 

Another IJA International Festival has come and gone and for both those who attended and those who missed it we are fortunate to have another festival video. Those who have seen Alan Plotkin's work before will be pleased with his traditional touches: imaginative and hilarious use of music underlays for various segments; wide and varied coverage of both standard acts and on-the-fly conversations and situations; very good visual elements with tight framing and quick pans/zooms; good color rendition and audio pick-up in enor­mously varied environments.

 

Starting with an interesting Anthony Gatto interview/showcase, we see the new "beefed up" weight-training expert in some of his flashiest ring and club moves. Next are excerpts from the Showcase of European Talent. The Juniors Bronze (Kevin Byland), Silver (Casey Boehmer) and Gold (Vladik Miagkostoupov) acts are included. Following are some stage acts, late nighters, class sequences and demonstrations.John Helds dance troupe is included in a section here, followed by John Gilkey's routine with the hat rack.

 

Excerpts from the Team Bronze (Trio One Over Par), Silver (Cousin Brothers) and Gold (Blink) are followed by an auction segment where Gattos boy-pins are sold-off, the numbers competitions, joggling, other contests, more late­night and cabaret acts. The Individual Silver and Gold acts of Jay Gilligan and Francoise Rochais ensue in one delightful sequence. In an unusual section of the tape, underscored by Ethel Mermans "Anything You Can Do," there is a collage of old movies/tapes of past famous jugglers contrasted with modem numbers jugglers; this IS a lot of fun. There are brief segments of the Bobby May (Dan Holzman), Historical Achievement (Rudy Cardenas) and Excellence (Dick Franco) Awards, blessedly brief. The finish is a montage of workshops and demos.