Cool Ways to Juggle Balls & Cubes

While the basics of juggling take much practice to master, technique alone is not enough to build a full show's worth of entertainment. To keep your viewers engaged, you'll need some special tricks in your repertoire. Some of these build from variations on basic technique, while others require extra practice.

One-Handed

One-handed juggling is a great trick for the early part of your act. This maneuver is different from traditional two-handed juggling and requires additional practice to master.

Hold both balls in your hand, one toward the front (flat fingers) and one in the palm. Toss the ball in the front of your hand up; while it's in the air, move the ball in your palm to the front of your hand. Catch the first ball in the back of your hand while bringing your hand up and tossing the second ball into the air to repeat.

This trick becomes twice as impressive once you can do it with both hands at the same time. Introduce one hand, then the other, in your act.

Rolling and Catching

An entertaining way to get your balls and cubes into juggling play is to roll them along various parts of your body, especially your arms and head. This trick is easy to learn, though it will take some time. Chances are you will have little trouble rolling a ball a short distance on your arm, but it takes practice to roll it the length of your limb without dropping it.

When finished with a juggling piece, a classic way to remove it from play is to catch it in a bag or hat. To do a variation on this move, wear a costume with large baggy pockets. Catching juggled objects in your pockets gives you an opportunity to incorporate some spinning dance moves into your routine. The more complex the move, the higher you'll need to toss the balls to have time to do the move before the balls come down, so you'll need plenty of practice to get it just right.

Conjuring

If you have any experience in basic conjuring and palming techniques you can combine the art of juggling with stage magic. Imagine how impressed your audience will be when the number of balls you juggle seems to magically increase, or just as magically reduce at the end. To emphasize the trick, add and remove a ball of a different color.

The challenge with this technique is that palming requires balls or cubes (made of lightweight foam) to be compressed into the hand to conceal them. Learning to juggle with a light object will require extra practice.

References

• "Juggling for the Complete Klutz," John Cassidy and B.C. Rimbeaux, 1994