I came across the term by accident. I'd certainly never heard of it before, so curiosity in hand I went strolling through the land of WWW to find out. And this is the answer I discovered:
"Contact Juggling (also known as Dynamic Manipulation, Sphereplay, Orb Rolling, Spherical balancing etc.) is a relatively new form of juggling where balls are rolled over the hands and body instead of tossing them in the air."
Right, understandable enough a definition. Now my first reaction was 'cool, that's definitely new.' But after thinking over it a while, you begin to get a sense of 'oh boring' and 'c'mon, that sounds like just about anyone could do it.' Yes, that would be the concept you might get from just reading the above sentence. But oh, here is where the written definition does not do much justice to the art. You have to see it to really understand.
The extended, and likely more accurate, definition of "contact juggling" which I came to understand, is that it's not just "rolling balls along your body." Rather, it's an art of making that ball look like it's freaking floating in the air unassisted, flowing fluidly through liquid or with other spheres which are magnetic, or in fact not moving at all while you yourself are moving around the sphere.
Seeing contact juggling in action makes you realise that there is possibly more coordination skill involved in the art than in normal juggling. Alright, admittedly the music in this video did add to the pwnage, but I kid you not when I say that watching these guys go made my skin tingle and ran shivers though my spine. I mean look at the guy at the end. He does it with a BUBBLE!
The most incredible part is, when I focussed on the spheres themselves, they really did appear to float or be magnetically drawn to something/one another. If I focussed on the hands, of course I could see how they are in fact being supported by the hands/body of the performer. But it's not something that sticks out without having any attention put on it. In silence, the juggling looks amazing and I can't take my eyes off it. Add a little music and it looks magical!
The more I watch this the more I feel annoyed at just how much the written definition lets it down. For someone completely new to the idea, a verbal explanation could render the false impression that it's incredibly easy, boring, or something practised over-extensively by geeks or cliques.
It isn't.
Far from it.
It could be just about the coolest thing I've ever seen.
For anyone who wants to learn more about contact juggling, I found the definition and video on ContactJuggling.org.
And the collaboration vid is officially going into my favourites, like...everywhere.
