My dad is a juggler of sorts. He can juggle 3 balls and toss one behind his back. A few years ago he picked up juggling bowling pins. And then this year he got into throwing knives. He taught me to juggle and sometimes I juggle for my son to keep him entertained in the bath tub.
So I went down the rabbit hole (after posting about the twin girls who juggle large objects with their feet) yesterday looking for video footage I remembered seeing on PBS when I was a kid. It was a juggler who did two amazing things. He did multidirectional juggling in a wooden triangle, and he spun crystal balls almost magically around in his hand.
The Juggler was Michael Moschen and the program was Great Performances and the year was 1991. Moschen is a recipient of the McArthur Genius Grant and has performed on tv, stage and created original works for the Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.
Michael Moschen The Triangle
This is an amazing piece that combines rhythmic music, visual dazzle and amazing skill.
Contact Juggling
Moscheen also invented Contact Juggling which is a technique for manipulating objects with your body such that it looks like the objects are self animating. Here’s an example. It’s AMAZING!
The hands of David Bowie
Moschen did the hand stunts in the Jim Henson film Labyrinth. Here’s a segment from a documentary on how they created the effect for the movie.
Michael Moschen on TED
While looking for Moschen videos I found his talk and demonstration from 2002. He does some great tricks and explains the thinking behind how and why he created them. There’s even a great demonstration of the process of learning something new when he tried to teach the audience to do a finger trick. He describes learning a trick as, “ that area of learning which is very insecure,” and “a moment that you can’t make sense of.”
So my son asks me to juggle. In his tub of bath toys are three rubber basketballs about 4 centimeters in diameter. He hands them to me and says, “juggle Dada!” So I do. But a couple of times I’ve tried to teach him to juggle. Just one ball. which is really just throwing it up and catching it. Not what most people think of when they think of juggling. It’s simple, but still a leap of skill that most two year olds, including him, can’t master. But then he couldn’t master riding the Strider bike at first either. But now he’s got it.
My point is this, our kids spend a lot of time in what Moschen describes as that very insecure area of learning such as mastering the skill of Juggling which he describes as, “feeling with your eyes and seeing with your hands.” Adults, however do not spend a lot of time there and we often say, “why the hell should I learn this?” But kids don’t ask that question, and they take the insecurity of learning in stride because that’s their whole world.
Interesting…
-Mike
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