Introduction to Scarf Juggling

Series Summary

Juggling is a skill where objects such as balls, bowling pins or rings are thrown and caught in succession. The first known record of juggling is illustrated on a 2nd Millennium B.C. Egyptian tomb wall. Court jesters and court musicians were known to juggle in the Middle Ages in Europe and in the 18th century jugglers started performing in modern circuses. Today juggling is performed on stages across America and on cruise ships around the world but it is also a national past time enjoyed by Americans of almost all ages. From juggling balls, clubs, or scarves, juggling can be learned without years of practice. Scarf juggling may be the best way to start to learn as scarves fall much more slowly than balls or clubs.

Learn scarf juggling from Adria Moskowitz a two time national television performer who studied with some of the greats in the entertainment field; people like Cindy Marvell, the first woman to win a gold medal in juggling. Adria demonstrates such tricks, techniques, and patterns as juggling one, two, three, and four scarves; transitioning from three to four scarves; the full shower; the scarf cascade; the half shower; over the top trick; sequential throws under one leg and alternating legs in this free online video lesson.

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Adria. I am one of the professional jugglers here at expertvillage.com. We are doing scarf juggling. What we are going to learn now is how to handle four scarfs. What we have learned on earlier scarf segments how to hold the scarfs, we are going to be doing the same thing. The first scarf of each hand we are holding, using the first two fingers and the thumb. The second scarf of each hand, we are using the last two fingers, the ring finger and the pinky holding it against the palm of the hand. In this way, we keep the scarf separate so that we can drop them or throw them individually of each other. Now comes the fun part. We are going to refer back to Stephen Bent’s four ball instructional video where he taught how to juggle four balls. Remember four balls, one is let go out of every hand individually. Well we are going to do the same thing with the scarfs. It is very simple. It is going to be a two scarf action with each hand like if that is not simple, we are lifting them, we are dropping. Lift and drop. We saw the basis of this when we are doing three scarfs two up one up combinations. This is very simple. Just gets complicated when you add the other hand. The other hand being the left hand again lifting and dropping, lifting dropping and catching before anything hits the ground. Now, we are going to take these scarfs and we are going to do this together. Lift and lift, lift and lift, lift and lift. This is the basis of four scarf juggling. What we have are the scarfs going up in parallel called a four scarf parallel transit."