What is Contact Juggling?

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Jeremy with Expert Village. We're actually going to move on to my favorite type of juggling which is called "contact juggling". Michael Moschen actually made this type of juggling famous when he did the movie "The Labyrinth", it's an 80's movie, where the ball seems to move on David Bowie's hands as Jereth, the Goblin King. And we're going to go ahead and teach you how to do that. Now, these are different kinds of balls you can learn with. One, this is the standard ball for contact juggling. It's acrylic, it's a three inch acrylic right here. Usually when you get an acrylic make sure you get one about the size of your closed fist. For me that's about three inches. A lot of people with smaller hands, two and one-half inches or two and three-quarters. But this is not the ball I would suggest starting with, just because if you drop it, it won't break, but it can scarf it up pretty bad. What I usually start with is either a lacrosse ball which you can get at a sporting goods store for about $7.00 or a simple dog ball which is, in this case, about $2.00, and you can use other types of balls but those three are probably the best. Now if you ever do contact juggling outside, realize that this acrylic is basically a very, very good lens. It will take the light and it will put it down to a point. I've had it burn my pants or my coat before when holding it in once place too long, so they do actually make opaque or basically dark acrylics so that the sun can't go though them, blacks and purples and that. And if you're going to do a lot of contact juggling outside, I would suggest once you do it starting your shows, that you use those. "