The Juggling Equipment Blog

Name: Bruce Sarafian
Country: United States
Age: 43
Favorite prop: Balls
Started Juggling: Age 10
Currently working on: 6 club juggling
Website: JugglingUSA.com

Short Bio:
I started juggling around the age of 10.  In 1991 I tied the WORLD RECORD for ball juggling.  In 1993 I was the new official WORLD RECORD HOLDER (as authenticated and listed by THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS) for the most balls at once ever!  I was very proud of this since the previous record had held since the 1930′s!  Since then I have broken a few more world records, have appeared in several commercials, have appeared on 2 different episodes of the syndicated show “DOUBLE DARE 2000″ on Nickelodeon, taped an appearance for an episode of ‘Experience Eldorado’ in 2009, and have been mentioned in many trivia questions including one that appeared on the TV show ‘Jeopardy’.  I have also been a performing juggler everywhere including all the major Central FL theme parks (Universal, Islands of Adventure, Disney, Sea World, MGM, Animal Kingdom, etc) casinos, tradeshows, 5-star resorts and special events of just about every kind.  Also on the list are numerous festivals, fairs, & corporate clients including Daytona Coke Zero 400, Space Coast Festival, New York Metro Balloon & Music Festival, Central Florida Fair, El Dorado County Fair, Anderson County Fair, Lenawee County Fair, just to name a few.

Defining moment in my juggling history: When I broke the 10 ball record with 11 balls in 1992.

Spoiler! »

Favorite Cereal: Peanut Butter Capn Crunch
3 things you didnt know about me:
1. I once owned 2 Subway restaurant franchises.
2. It took me about 3 yrs to learn 4 balls.
3. I am not amidextrous but I am 50% right handed and 50 % left handed with general everyday things
If I werent a juggler, I would be: A car dealer.
Time it took me to learn 5 balls: 6 months.
Is juggling sport or art? Both but I would pick Art.
If I were a juggling equipment, I would be: A Unicycle (I think uni’s are very neat).
Jugglers in my family: No one else.
Juggling equipment that has not been invented yet: A helium filled ball that will slow down to about 1/2 the speed and let the juggler do 15 or 20 balls at once…..’
Famous juggler i’d love to pass with: Probably Popovich, he has always been one of my favorites…
after the invention of a time machine – what advice would you give to your younger self?
Just practice as much as you are having fun to get your skill as best as possible if you plan to do shows.

we have a new project here at our blog – we are going to start featuring one juggler from around the globe every week. we have started to send out questionnaires to prominent jugglers whom we kindly asked to fill and resend them. They were asked to tell us what their favorite juggling prop is, what trick they are working on at the moment and of course what their favorite cereal is.
The project will launch this Tuesday – come check out one juggler from around the globe!

Main Entry: headcase
Part of Speech: n
Definition: a mentally unstable person who acts irrationally or foolishly; an eccentric person
Usage: informal

In my last entry I discussed the juggling club that finds itself in Levanger, Norway, and how marvellous it is that the members of this group can get together and practice not only during the weekly meetings, but also on other occasions – giving the members not only a much stronger social tie to each other, but also a much greater chance to practice more and get better.

One of the results of this is that linked to the social network that has been developed, we are inspiring and motivating each other in many ways that I am sure several other juggling clubs may be lacking. We aren’t directly competitive, but all of the members enjoy accomplishing new things that they can show off to the others – for support and feedback. And one of the things that have come of this, is a very high skill level. I am the only member to have done seven balls for more than three hundred and fifty catches, but that doesn’t mean that the rest isn’t gaining on me – currently there are four members except for myself that are running seven balls for more than fifty catches, and two of these have broken a hundred – one is also working on 966, 3 up 4 up and 5 up 360s with 7. The success in this is limited, but the skill is still visible.

In addition to this, we have six members running five clubs for over fifty catches – four of these above a hundred, and two of these again for more than two hundred catches. Not only does this display an amazing level of skill considering there are 23 regular attendees and so many are working on such a high level, but all of the members but two(myself and Frode, who is 31) are below 16 years of age – of which the two most talented are only 13.

Does your club have a high technical drive and motivational tendencies like this? Do you compete against each other like we do? It’s interesting to see that the different juggling clubs around the world have so many different cultures in them; some are purely social and some are almost only technical, and some are a mix – like ours. But we have no members that exclude themselves from the community, no, everybody is a part of the social scene, hanging out and chatting – and all are a part of the technically motivated group where we practice to get better.

How do you want your group to be? Is there anything you can do to motivate your fellow members to change anything?

Hi everyone,

My name is Asaf Mor, I’m 18 from Israel and I’ve been spinning Poi for about 6.5 years. I’ll be posting here about Poi, Staff and anything else that can be spun basically.

Recently, thanks to amazing Poi spinners like Ronan and Cyrille I’ve decided to go into some Contact Poi.  As you can probably guess, Contact Poi is done by combining moves from Contact Juggling into your spinning. I first saw Contact Poi at a workshop by Laura at PLAY 2007, she was doing things closer to Contact Staff and Devilsticks, and I couldn’t find a set of poi that allowed me to do anything remotely interesting involving contact, so I forgot about it for a while.

Until IJC 2009, where I saw Ronan’s mind-blowing performance at the Gala Show, he was doing incredibly difficult moves and making them look effortless, without falling into the typical “Tech-Spinner” problem of standing still while doing difficult moves. His body movement was great and elegant and it complimented his style very well. He’s one of those spinners who don’t need fire, in fact, as he explained in an interview for a DVD, he finds it restricting, and thus he tends to look at poi as object manipulation, rather than fire spinning.

Recently I took that same point of view, trying to figure out what was possible when you’re not restricted by fire, naturally, I started with contact poi, since that’s what got me interested in this type of manipulation. I’ve been doing it for about a month and I’ve learned a few of the moves I’ve seen online, and I’ve also discovered some interesting variations while practicing. This is probably the best thing to happen to Poi in a while, this is yet another mental limit removed from our spinning, and giving us so many new possibilities.

The contact poi I am currently using is basically an 80mm MB Stage ball on one end and a PX3 Play knob on the other hand connected by a polyester rope. If you want to get one for yourself here is a link to the product page on Home of poi

I was going to put a video dedicated to Contact Poi, but I’ve decided to put this post up and upload the video later, so here’s Cyrille, one of the people who inspired me to start doing this:

Greg Kennedy rises again with his amazing conic device.
He is also raising the amount of balls and now juggle with 9!
I think it could be interesting to try 11, doesn’t seem impossible…
Enjoy -

Here is the second part of the Happy Oree Friends stuff. THIS was the first part.

in this part i will review in depth the making of the 5 last videos in my Happy Oree Friends series. You can learn a bit more about how i came to make each video and some of the extra bit of information that will let you enjoy the videos even more.

I am currently working on a large scale video, with Big surprises – it will be IMO the best juggling video I have ever made. But you will have to wait a while longer. Stay tuned to our blog – news will be posted here first!

Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry →

In this post I would like to take the oppurtunity to tell you a little bit about my juggling club.

The club in Levanger, Norway, has no formal list of member, but still there are quite a bit of attendants. Every week, twenty-one jugglers ranging from age 11 to 19 attend the club, sticking around for between one and fifteen hours, depending on the time they have at their disposal.

The reason for the fifteen hours in question, is not that we stay in the gym for that long. It might also seem incredible that all 21 are there every week, but the reason is that I am employed by the county’s cultural department to coach these youngsters in juggling. They have one hour of coaching every week for which I am paid, and it is at this time that everyone comes to the gym. Not all of them at once though; they are in two groups numbering 10 and 11 that are coached one hour each. Each group that is, not person.

Now – this school owns a gym which we use, but these two hours are not the only ones we spend there. It so happens that I have the keys for the gym, and so when I have time and it is available, I will go there to juggle, calling as many as I can to come with me. We are rarely more than ten jugglers when they don’t “have to” be there, but still I would say we have an astounding oppurtunity for practice, probably very unique.

Now, what I would like to know is what YOUR juggling club looks like. To whoever reads this – how many are you, and how often and for how long do you meet up to juggle? Please leave a comment; discussing this later on might be interesting!

That’s it for now, take care!

So I was looking for any good video recently and didn’t find anything extraordinary…
Suddenly a strange idea came up to my mind – searching “Juggling Equipment” on YouTube.
The first result was, obviously, Chris Bliss, but the second one (and the more interesting one) was Luke Burrage’s video.

Luke explains how to pack your “average” juggling show equipment into two suitcases. Interesting and useful in deed.

Here before you is the second part of the adventures of the “Le Botrio” trio in Israel and Palestine during the Israeli Juggling Convention of 2009.

If you haven’t read the first part you should do so first – first part of the story.

If you read the first part already skip to page 159 – or just read on.

Read the rest of this entry →