Before a concert at Michelham Priory, c1983.

Part of my baptism in early music took place touring around England with the Medieval players in the 1980s.

While I played rebec, I also learned the basics of juggling from Mark Heap and Mark Saban—though I was happy to leave the stilt-walking and fire-eating to them. Hard to imagine now, but later on European tours with baroque orchestras some of us used to fill the longueurs of hanging around at airports with impromptu juggling sessions.

Juggling inevitably becomes a flashy, often comical stage act (with a variety of props like clubs, and not least the old torch, egg, and frying-pan trick), but Mark Heap could transform it into a pure, transcendental activity (later offering some vignettes in Green wing).

Technical virtuosos rise to the challenge of five, seven, and even eleven balls, but that largely excludes fantasy. The variety of patterns with a mere three is a thing of wonder—all the more so with passing between two jugglers.

I note that ancient China features in the long history of juggling worldwide:

During a battle in about 603 BC between the states of Chu and Song, Xiong Yiliao stepped out between the armies and juggled nine balls, which so amazed the Song troops that all five hundred of them turned and fled, allowing the Chu army to win a complete victory.

So much for the military hardware of the modern PLA…

The way that the “given” building blocks are creatively combined into a routine reminds me of the process of musical creation in performance, with its balance of perspiration and inspiration. And it evolves constantly. For some taxonomy, see here; the vocabulary is cute (though, like musicians, many jugglers won’t necessarily be aware of it)—all kinds of cascade, mess, column, shower, shuffle, box, grab, claw, bump, yoyo, and so on, easily found in online videos. I haven’t quite found the fake throwaway that Mark Heap used to do so beautifully.

Anita Bartling (1887–1966).

To make up for the usual male-dominated perspective, there are fine introductions, with video links, to female jugglers in history here and here.

Left: wedding party, Mantua 1999.
Right: on tour with EBS, Lyon 1982.

Like clapping, juggling is an art that should be cultivated from young. Start, and indeed continue, with bean bags (cf. the Larson Stradivarius cartoon: “Violins galore! Start the kids on one today!”)!