Juggling

Juggling can be categorised by various criteria:

• Professional or amateur

Juggling up until the latter half of the 20th century has been principally practised as a profession. Since the 1960s, and even more so from the 1980s, juggling has also been practiced as a hobby. The popularity of juggling acts performing outside the circus has meant an increase in the number of professional jugglers in the last 30 years. Festivals, fairs, retail promotions and corporate events have all booked juggling acts. The increase in hobby juggling has resulted in juggling stores opening and numerous juggling conventions being run to fulfill the needs of an increasingly popular pastime.

• Objects juggled

Balls, clubs, rings, diabolos, devil sticks and cigar boxes are several types of objects that are commonly juggled. Other objects, such as scarves, knives, fruit and vegetables, flaming torches and chainsaws, have also been used.

• Method of juggling

The best known type of juggling is (toss juggling): which is throwing and catching objects in the air without the objects touching the ground. Bounce juggling is bouncing objects (usually balls) off the ground. Contact juggling is manipulating the object in constant contact with the body.

• Trick juggling

This type of juggling involves performing tricks of varying levels of difficulty. The tricks can use the basic patterns of toss juggling but add more difficult levels of object manipulation. Other tricks can be independent of these basic patterns and involve other variations of object manipulation.

• Number of objects juggled

Numbers juggling is the goal of juggling as many objects as possible. This is often the initial goal of beginner jugglers as it is commonly seen in the circus and stage juggling acts. Numbers juggling records are noted by a number of organisations.

• Number of jugglers

Juggling is most commonly performed by an individual. However, multiple-person juggling is also popular and is performed by two or more people. Various methods of passing the objects between the jugglers is used — this can be through the air (as in toss juggling), bounced off the ground, simply handed over, or a number of other ways depending on the objects and the style of juggling. For example, one variation is where two club jugglers stand facing each other, each juggling a 3-club pattern themselves, but then simultaneously passing between each other. Another variation is where the jugglers are back-to-back and (usually) any passes to the other person travel over their heads.

• Sport juggling

Juggling has more recently developed as a competitive sport by organizations such as the World Juggling Federation. Sport juggling competitions reward pure technical ability and give no extra credit for showmanship, or for juggling with props such as knives or torches.Albert Lucas created the first sport juggling organization in the early nineties - the International Sport Juggling Federation,^[7] which promotes joggling and other athletic forms of juggling.