#play juggling

Well, its been a week since I posted challenge #3, and every day of that week I've bounced my way closer to new creative tools for my manipulation tool box. While I had in the past briefly attempted to bounce juggle, to learn tricks, expand its interaction with normal juggling, and focus on anything other than basic technique and numbers is all new for me. I've found bounce juggling very pleasant actually, and when you have a small enclosed space to practice in, its much more relaxing and less physically demanding than most normal juggling. If you try to practice in an open space of course, where these balls (which have a 94% bounce return) can go all different directions... well then good luck. But if nothing else this week proves that the easiest and most essential part of juggling, is dropping. Which to me would mean that bounce juggling is better translated as "Dropping with Style"!

While of course I've once again failed to make a video, its mostly due to my not having made as much progress as I had hoped to. But don't get me wrong, huge progress has indeed been made. I tend to forget that even in juggling (something I know very well and have at times been very good at) learning new things take time, and perfection takes a commitment and determination that is often not possible. Bounce juggling is certainly something I'll be doing more of in the future, perhaps without so much concentration on just bouncing, but rather as I've said, using its interaction with my other juggling style and tricks.

Its a meditative type of skill, and in my case was best done while listening to an audio book. Which this week, I will admit with some embarrassment, was Harry Potter, and the Order of the Pheonix.

Now while the title of this week's challenge might be simple in wording and-to those who are not jugglers-strange in concept, I assure you this is nothing particularly special. Well at least not yet. While at some point in my long and diverse juggling history I learned a basic 5 ball bounce pattern, I never had the opportunity or even attempted to make progress with the skill. In truth, part of this reason was that my focus at the time was on normal juggling, and while bounce juggling obviously uses almost exactly the same skill set, you could equate it to rock climbing upside down.

Since moving to my house on Mallorca 14 months ago, I've had the nagging feeling that these hard tile floors which cover 99% of it had to be good for something aside from keeping your feet cold. Well upon receiving my last sponsorship package from my good friends at Play Juggling I suddenly found myself in possession of 5 bounce juggling balls and realized what the nagging had been. My house, in effect, is a bounce juggling playground. Full of angles, archways, cement walls and tiled floors, if bounce jugglers ever had bounce juggling parties, this would be the world's perfect private venue. So with that we have this week's challenge. Bounce juggling. The same rules apply, and as loosely as ever except for the one:

Bounce Juggle every day for 7 days.

Today being the first day, I've already had the pleasure of practicing for an hour or more, and I'm excited to see what this week brings for me. Apart from the natural refinement and building of this skill, I've already realized the immense creative possibilities of integrating bounce juggling to my already complicated creative ideals. From tomorrow on I will be dedicating a lot of time to learning 3 or 4 tricks that though more advanced then my current skill level, are both great practice of discipline and form, while being genuinely cool, fun and interesting work. The advantage of bounce, is that of the current juggling disciplines I feel it to be the least utilized, and therefore has the most room to grow. In fact, should I be able to achieve even a short run of a 9 ball bounce, I will enter an elite group of only several hundred people worldwide; but honestly that's not of my concern at the moment, for while the technical elite is small, the creative elite of bounce is equally tiny, and a whole lot more interesting.

My secondary challenge rule stands, that is of course the making of the video, but only in so much that it can be executed without distracting me from my goal which is to practice and improve. Perhaps I will in the end shoot something, but only a small sample.