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TEDx Talks
Published: 2013-05-20
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB_sfnwbgvk
so my name's Jay I've been juggling for twenty eight years I grew up in America where I learned to juggle at the age of eight and it wasn't until ten years later that I came to Europe for the first time and I saw European style juggling and in European style juggling actually been men and the other Scandinavian countries our our big influences in that style and
I do not understand anything so I've been juggling for ten years and in America juggling is really based upon skill so for example whenever juggle if I learn to check with my dominant hand I'm left handed so I throw on the lake with my left hand I would go into the lake also with my right hand so you can see that I'm very skills that I
learned a trick on both sides as well the other tricks an American juggling are looping repeating patterns for example district here it just keeps going and going it's the same shape that doesn't change the rhythm is the same as well another time big part of American style juggling can be that it's a magical so here's a pattern that's this change on both sides and again you
can see that it loops and it just keeps and it doesn't change and the rhythm is the same the steady beat so when I came to Europe and I saw the kind of juggling and again Scandinavian style as well as similar to European style it looks a bit like this and you can see that looks really strange to me compare to the first love talking that
I showed you there's a lot of starts and stops the patterns don't repeat they don't happen on both sides it's asymmetrical again in America when I grew up another in the jungle I would begin with a big start and then I we keep juggling and at the end of the day clear finish but what people see what's here Denise in Europe and Scandinavia this kind of
juggling was very broken down the rhythm started and stopped it was hard for me to figure out so I was really intrigued by this and I wanted to learn how to juggle like %HESITATION like somebody from Finland for example and along this journey I discovered many different things not only about the kind of joking that I was doing before the objects that I was using because
one thing that was the same in America and in Europe is the kind of objects we juggled so there's the juggling balls there's also juggling club which of course you fit and the juggling greatness of the three men props the Germans use I've been juggling the circle of plastic for twenty eight years I put in twenty thousand hours of rehearsal with this problem loans not the
browser comes just with dreams that's two years of my life constantly juggling this circle of plastic no eating or sleeping two years nonstop drug I've built a career out of the circle of plastic I make my living with this its heartbeat type pay my rent and I know it very well you can do lots of different things %HESITATION I know exactly what this piece of plastic
will do but it wasn't until nineteen years after I started juggling that I ask myself why why is this ring like this why is it it's shape this thickness wait burial the only thing my friends and I have ever wondered about before was maybe the color for example I need to have a nice bright color if I have a black backdrop and I'm going to be
doing a performance or if I'm rehearsing for example in a racquetball court it's quite popular for jugglers never white ceiling and then I would need a dark colored rings but that was the end of my my thought process about this subject when I learned to juggle that's just what it was it was just always there as far as I knew and even in two thousand and
three when Mister Abbas which is that Jugni prop manufacture from Switzerland they released this ring here and you can see it's bigger even then intent on the net spark anything in my mind I've seen bigger things before but the thing was bigger rings they're not for throwing in the air they're called spinning rings so I guess been a ball on my finger and spinner ring around
a part of my body on my arm maybe on my leg because the bigger size makes it easier to get the right rhythm to keep spending even then when I saw the thing of all to spinning ring I just know that you don't throw this one in the air but then in two thousand and four the robot she really stream and this ring in many question
everything because swing makes no sense it's it's small it's too small you've got a very large hands it's too small %HESITATION the way it is very bad if I'm gonna throw a normal ring I put a little bit of spin on it to keep it stable in the air but this ring you don't have enough weight even if I spent it it's kind of light that
bounces around it doesn't I don't know why it exists I mean is there really a big gap in the market for child jugglers who are struggling you know their true there on the street corners because they can't use the to be or I don't know I never heard about that I don't know so with this ring came out it made me want to do two things
number one it didn't really make you want to find out why this man was the size rather it made me question why this ring was the size so I wanted to find out the history of my drug problems which isn't really in the juggling culture and for sure in other genres this doesn't seem very revolutionary but juggling at such a young art form that these questions
are just coming up now so I wanted to find out why this thing was the size and also I wanted to find tricks juggling tricks that you would do the small ring that could only be done with the small ring and thereby justify its existence and so before I show you some of those checks I think to tell you why this ring it's the size it
turns out my friend may god bring and his name is David again he goes on to the stage name of professor confidence and his motto is a touch is as good as the cats and he wrote the first juggling book that I bought that either in the jungle from and I'm really fortunate to know this man and so I sent an email I said Hey why
are they certainly means the size and this is what he wrote me back it was in Taiwan in nineteen seventy six I had just learned to juggle in Seattle and wanted to get juggling props made in Asia but had no samples from which to work I had just seen one good ring jugular at the Delaware convention he was a guy named spider man who cut his
rings out of sheets of plastic there was no standard thirteen inch juggling ring yet so I was in a plastic factory in Taiwan and I was telling the proprietor Mr inside about rings he had a cookie ten on his desk so I used to draw circles then I found another round item in the office and drew a circle inside of that circle we use that as
the template for the first rings we made so so it could be ten two years of my life I would guess in other fields of study or arts there's a lot of research that goes into manufacturing out there's a lot of planning there's a really popular three ring check up like this are you looks like this none of the rings clip one available on the head
now that's a very standard trick a very standard technique for me as a juggler what would have happened yeah the factory owner was on a diet I don't know how to smaller picky ten I don't know can be very different trick when I go on my head my whole life's work based around me would put the ring around my head it's very strange you already hear
the prejudice in my opinion about these props because I say that's this a normal ring and if we call it baby ring or a small ring and this is a big rain but of course Douglas who thought today they just know that there's a forty centimeter a thirty two centimeter and a twenty four centimeter and they don't see the difference the way I do when I
started out I'd like to show you a few of the chicks I found with this baby ring twenty four centimeters %HESITATION that can only be done using this ring they're the prince juggler the need home yeah and Americans are there Sean blue we started to combine the smaller rings with a large earrings in suddenly chicks like this became possible you can see a different side together
it allows me to same technique using these normal rings but I started out with they always were the same height so it's very difficult to catch them in the same hand at the same time so this new size of rings suddenly made a new technique possible and as well Oscar anger of Sweden he started to play with all the three different sizes brings and I have
a few tricks but I mean that that you can see this kind of juggling do you do style drug evolves a much more human way so this is this investigation %HESITATION led me to make what's called that manipulation research laboratory we did three projects and of those projects we started and trying to find out what would the difference if you don't know what kind here is
to be used and now we've collaborated with renegade juggling from California and Tom kid well we made different kinds of juggling objects for example instead of a circle why not a triangle again this might not seem so difficult to grasp well paid we have a surplus he's a triangle of square and octagon but in juggling this is where we're at right now with the art it's
really exciting I love it to be alive right now because you get the final these new things but they're very very basic I think %HESITATION so like this so your chick you can do only with three triangles it looks like this you can imagine that's not trying on so I've been talking a little bit about chicks you can only do with different size means are only
do with a triangle let me show you one check and the deafening sample I do something with five triangles that you could actually do with five rings are five squares alright so look something like this for example take five objects I have a big hole in the middle and take six places around your body so for example we'll go with I left foot on the head
although left hand with you rights %HESITATION elbow and also the right foot and in this pattern because we do is move the triangles or the objects around the body each hole in sequence so the first thing I can do is change from my left foot to my right foot then this one in my hand goes to the left foot the head goes to the hand this
one goes back on the elbow from this elbow onto the head and finally from the right foot back to the right elbow and in this way I can juggle these five China also but it's not specific to only five trying to think of the five rings five squares what I can show you one more image that you can only do with five triangles it's like this
yeah no mood swings the nhin song they were playing around is the precise rings in the combined for example the big ring in this morning they combine them different sizes what if we keep the same shape I sort of changing into a triangle we keep a circle but we join them together so their links and as well combine this with an entirely different shapes such as
the ball and I prepared a little choreography for you nmap leann I really beat juggling made the gate design layout little boutique juggling company makes different government props we've taken a different kind the props to combine together for example today we've seen the driving rain which again has a very large hole in the middle and we try to combine this with other different shapes for example
traditional juggling club and no it it would be if it had a large hole in it as well so the results are these clubs it's a normal time in public with a big hole in it of course they can be used %HESITATION in the normal way again but having this hole in the club allows for different techniques that were never possible before such as this no
images like that were never possible before we juggling decided to define and combine the different shapes together all of this investigation into the history of government props maybe you want to find an object that had its own history in the moment %HESITATION an outfit that would be a concrete path of where it's been as indicated I think the show you one option I have for that
now I can juggle these balls of string in the normal way doesn't with three balls but as they move through space November record of where they've been and it makes no much are going a little bit more complicated and you can start to see not only where the object has been in relationship for example to my body if I throw behind the back or for example
under the leg but also you can start to see the relationship of my body the object if I start to try to unwind the string on purpose and in this way if you have a record of where all these objects have been the entire time if it if it appears that pattern again I showed you at the beginning of all the sweet new props and new
