See also the previous articles: Interesting Tricks and Interesting Juggling Tricks
I missed (at least) one reason why tricks can be interesting.
I call this reason: The Toy Factor
Sometimes you see a performance and they introduce or remind you of a new concept or a new prop, and you just wish that you could play with it
This is very similar to child behavior with toys: Seeing other people play with something makes you want to play with it too. The feeling is located around jealousy or curiosity.
The Toy Factor might not be so common for a regular audience, but I don't know this for sure. It is of course mostly trained jugglers that see the thousands of new possibilities that arrive with a new thing, though perhaps non jugglers would have a similar reaction to something less complex but still new to them.
Showing posts with label tricks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tricks. Show all posts
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Interesting juggling tricks
The article "Interesting Tricks" did of course not exclusively apply to juggling. It applies to tricks of any kind.
Read the article linked above to catch up on my definitions of: Impressive, Visually appealing, Conceptually interesting, Novelty or Surprise, Recognition.
What makes juggling tricks special, what are its strengths?
In juggling there seem to be more possibilities than in for example acrobatics. Therefore there are a lot of opportunities to innovate and surprise your audience with novelty.
Also, a repeating pattern can be set in a matter of seconds. Even those who have never seen juggling before can be conditioned quickly, so you can break their expectations.
Juggling tricks are often easy enough to perform them in many different ways. Therefor we can even put other actions (thus recognition) in our tricks. For example eating apples, clawing the balls like a cat or kissing them like a stereotypical Frenchman, tricks which street performers commonly use. Of course the out of place recognition of these actions also surprises your audience.
It remains easy to dance or move in certain ways and juggling tricks can easily be used as metaphors.
With a large group of jugglers having seen thousands of tricks, it is possible to create tricks that are conceptually interesting simply for the sake of the trick. What can we do when we combine a ring and a club into one single prop, and create a club with a hole? These are the kind of questions that team RDL asked for example. Concepts like for example: Balances, bounces, rotations, siteswaps, pirouttes, isolations, prop combinations etc are explored to extreme depths by various jugglers creating all new sorts of ideas. With infinite possibilities juggling allows for easy and fun experimentation.
Juggling can be very aesthetic and visually appealing. It is often rhythmically pleasing, and the performer can easily choose and change what props, size and color he wants for his display. It is similar to dance in that it is about movement, but not necessarily with the body. Trick mastery allows for the search of the most aesthetic variation.
As long as props are out of our control there is a certain tension about if we get them back. With multiple props it is not hard to make tricks look very complex. Seeming to master this complex risky pattern is impressive. So impressive that audiences often have unrealistic memories about jugglers, exaggerating the number of balls they have seen.
Juggling has way more strengths than this, I am sure of it. You are welcome to list your favorite in the comments.
Read the article linked above to catch up on my definitions of: Impressive, Visually appealing, Conceptually interesting, Novelty or Surprise, Recognition.
What makes juggling tricks special, what are its strengths?
In juggling there seem to be more possibilities than in for example acrobatics. Therefore there are a lot of opportunities to innovate and surprise your audience with novelty.
Also, a repeating pattern can be set in a matter of seconds. Even those who have never seen juggling before can be conditioned quickly, so you can break their expectations.
Juggling tricks are often easy enough to perform them in many different ways. Therefor we can even put other actions (thus recognition) in our tricks. For example eating apples, clawing the balls like a cat or kissing them like a stereotypical Frenchman, tricks which street performers commonly use. Of course the out of place recognition of these actions also surprises your audience.
It remains easy to dance or move in certain ways and juggling tricks can easily be used as metaphors.
With a large group of jugglers having seen thousands of tricks, it is possible to create tricks that are conceptually interesting simply for the sake of the trick. What can we do when we combine a ring and a club into one single prop, and create a club with a hole? These are the kind of questions that team RDL asked for example. Concepts like for example: Balances, bounces, rotations, siteswaps, pirouttes, isolations, prop combinations etc are explored to extreme depths by various jugglers creating all new sorts of ideas. With infinite possibilities juggling allows for easy and fun experimentation.
Juggling can be very aesthetic and visually appealing. It is often rhythmically pleasing, and the performer can easily choose and change what props, size and color he wants for his display. It is similar to dance in that it is about movement, but not necessarily with the body. Trick mastery allows for the search of the most aesthetic variation.
As long as props are out of our control there is a certain tension about if we get them back. With multiple props it is not hard to make tricks look very complex. Seeming to master this complex risky pattern is impressive. So impressive that audiences often have unrealistic memories about jugglers, exaggerating the number of balls they have seen.
Juggling has way more strengths than this, I am sure of it. You are welcome to list your favorite in the comments.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Interesting tricks
An object manipulation trick can be interesting for many reasons. This
is an attempt to list some, so we can understand them better.
Impressive
It looks like this trick is hard.
Visually appealing
You could hang this on the wall.
Conceptually interesting
It means something, even if that something is abstract.
Novelty or surprise
You had never seen or expected that before
Recognition
You had seen or expected that
Why are these reasons interesting? They each deserve a whole post for themselves..
All these can make a trick interesting to watch. Pushing tricks further in one of these directions might improve them. Of course this theory can be applied to routines too.
Interesting to watch is not the same as interesting to do.
Impressive
It looks like this trick is hard.
Visually appealing
You could hang this on the wall.
Conceptually interesting
It means something, even if that something is abstract.
Novelty or surprise
You had never seen or expected that before
Recognition
You had seen or expected that
Why are these reasons interesting? They each deserve a whole post for themselves..
All these can make a trick interesting to watch. Pushing tricks further in one of these directions might improve them. Of course this theory can be applied to routines too.
Interesting to watch is not the same as interesting to do.
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