IJA eNewsletter – February 2025

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www.juggle.org		    IJA eNewsletter
   February 2025Editors: Don Lewis & Martin Frost
(ijanews@juggle.org)

CONTENTS

  • When students ask, “Is this a trick?”
  • 2025 IJA Festival July 14-20
  • Enter the IJA Juggling Championships
  • Getting to Evansville
  • 2025 IJA Festival scholarship applications open
  • Sign up for the Evansville walking tour & pub crawl
  • Catch ’em low
  • YJA Badge Book
  • IJA Board meetings
  • Upcoming juggling festivals
  • Latest articles in eJuggle

 

 

When students ask, “Is this a trick?”  Benjamin Domask-Ruh

Hello IJA Community!

I taught a week-long juggling arts residency this month in a small town in Northern Minnesota. This type of teaching is a regular part of my year. I am invited to a town in Minnesota and spend my week with a group of elementary or high school students going through a week long juggling curriculum together. Typically I introduce students to the basics of toss juggling and balance juggling, with small detours into creation, performance, and development. (Fun Fact: This curriculum is available to IJA members FOR FREE. Visit: Youth Juggling Academy soon to find a link. Until then, feel free to send me an email to get the PDF.)

One important aspect of the week, for me, is to instill in these students not only a curiosity of juggling, but a sense of exploration of their physical world. I do this in a variety of ways including encouraging them to combine props in their “Toss Toss Catch Catch” exercises or by asking them, “What else can you balance a peacock feather on?” (the answer to which is usually their shoes, their glasses, pencils, school books, and, occasionally, each other).

Within the creation exercises, we work on changing the term “juggling” to no longer be “throwing and catching 2 or more objects.” We typically spend the teaching section of the class with just one scarf the first day! Just as every student is different, each class is different. And thus the curriculum is always twisting and turning and finding permutations to fit the needs of each class and each student. But one moment I always love to watch is when, after teaching some basic methodologies and terminologies, I make space for students to create their own tricks! (We define a trick together in class. Usually we land on a definition of “anything that varies from the baseline task.” E.g., if we throw and catch a scarf from right hand to left hand, something different has to happen during that path!)

Humans like to be creative. Students at all stages are curious as to what is possible! But there always seems to be a little hesitation to the freedom granted at this stage. I often hear the question, “Is this a trick?”, to which I reply, very socratically, “Is it different from the baseline task?”, and they usually ARE doing something different. Thus, they conclude, yes! But then I ask them, “Do you like this trick?” And THEN we see the magic happen.

At the end of the creation period in class, I ask students to share a trick they found that they are proud of with the rest of class. We go around the circle and anyone that wants to share (never forced to share at this stage) is invited to step into the circle and share. Hopefully this accomplishes a few things. 1) Students feel proud of what they found. 2) Other students get a chance to see how differently creative everyone is in their class. 3) They are secretly introduced to the idea of performing (which is one of the state’s learning objectives for performing arts). 4) They feel the validation and payoff of practicing.

When I asked students at the end of this week for feedback from prompts (what part of juggling did you enjoy, or how do you see juggling as an art, or how did it feel to share your tricks with the class), two answers stood out to me. One student said, “At first I had stage fright when I went to share my trick. But it completely disappeared when I was doing it and did it successfully!” Another student, in response to how they saw juggling as an art, answered, “It’s like putting paint on a canvas, except you can share your painting with the class and then they get to try what you put on your canvas!” That really resonates with me and, I think, with our juggling community at large.

We are all discovering tricks and sharing them with each other. And the ones we are really proud of, we get to teach each other and help them feel the same sense of achievement we felt! And maybe, just maybe, that helps us feel a little less afraid of the world at large and brings us a little closer together as a community.

Speaking of community, the IJA is here for YOU. If you have any thoughts or ideas (or tricks!) you’d like to share, please feel free to reach out to me at ija.chair@juggle.org. As a member, you are ALWAYS welcome to attend our board meetings by sending me an email for a Zoom link. Or you can see what the board has discussed each month by reading the minutes.

RA2FJ,
Benjamin Domask-Ruh
IJA Board Chair

 

 

Evansville, IN, site of 2025 IJA Festival2025 IJA Festival July 14-20  Martin Frost

Registration for the IJA Festival in Evansville, Indiana, should be opening sometime this month (March). Watch for an announcement coming soon.

Hotel reservations for the fest will open on April 1, 2025. On or after that date, please go to Festival Lodging for details and online booking links.

In the meantime, you can now enter the 2025 IJA Juggling Championships or sign up for the Evansville walking tour & pub crawl. And if you or someone your know needs financial help to attend the festival, the festival scholarship fund can render assistance — be sure to apply by March 15, 2025. All of these are described in articles below.

 

 

Enter the IJA Juggling Championships  Martin FrostIJA Juggling Championships 2018 Teams gold medalists

Now is your opportunity to enter the IJA Juggling Championships, the finals of which will be held on stage at the IJA Festival in Evansville, IN, on July 16, 2025. Total prize money for the competition is $4800.

There are three divisions: Individuals, Teams (two or more jugglers), and Juniors (individuals under 18 years old at the time of the finals).

To enter, polish up an act of five to eight minutes for Individuals or Teams, five to seven minutes for Juniors, and finish the entire entry process below by May 11, 2025 (in any timezone).

Potential entrants should read the IJA Juggling Championships Rules to understand the requirements for an act and how it will be judged.

Competitors who intend to use music in their act must read the IJA Music Policy to understand what music can be used.

Make a video for the preliminaries of one unedited single-camera shot of your complete routine, shot in landscape (horizontal) orientation, with live audio and your music (if any), making sure to satisfy the other requirements of the rules. Upload the video to youtube or vimeo using the settings listed in the rules.

You also need to pay the $25 entry fee and submit an entry form by the above deadline.

Finalists will be announced around June 10, 2025. Individuals and Juniors competitors who qualify for the finals of the IJA Juggling Championships will receive a FREE festival event package, and Teams will receive this benefit for up to four people per team. (Finalists who register for the festival with an event package before becoming finalists will be refunded the full price of their event package.)

If you have questions about the IJA Juggling Championships, please email ijachampionships@juggle.org.

 

 

Getting to Evansville  Mike Sullivan, Senior Future Festival Site Coordinator

If you’ve never been to Evansville, Indiana, you might be wondering what the best way is to get there.

Well, with Evansville, you have choices! And not all of them may be obvious, so before you lock in any plans for your travels, check out these options.

Fly to EVV
You can fly to Evansville Regional Airport (EVV) on American Airlines or Delta Airlines. There are flights from Chicago/O’Hare (ORD), Charlotte Douglass International Airport (CLT), Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport (ATL), and Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport (DFW). Both carriers operate daily flights from their world hubs and connect to hundreds of cities on five continents. Check FlightsFrom.com to see the best route to EVV from your city.

Fly & Drive, or Fly & Ride
Some travelers may want to investigate options available by flying to either Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF) or Nashville International Airport (BNA), then riding a bus or renting a car and driving to Evansville. Evansville is 127 miles from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport and 157 miles from Nashville International Airport.

Both Louisville and Nashville are served by every major US airline, including discount carriers Southwest and Frontier. You can likely save a bunch on airfare if you don’t mind driving or taking the bus to Evansville from BNA or SDF!

  • From Louisville, take a taxi to downtown (7 miles, ~$25), then take Miller Transportation bus to Evansville. Total travel time is about three hours and typical fare is around $60.
  • From Nashville, take the local city bus (WeGo Transit Route 18) to downtown Nashville, then take Greyhound bus to Evansville. Total travel time is around four hours and all-in fare is around $40.

Explore options, routes and fares on Rome2Rio.com.

More info on getting to Evansville is on the IJA Festival’s Location page.

See you in Evansville!

 

 

2025 IJA Festival scholarship applications open  Afton Benson, IJA Treasurer

The IJA J. Todd Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund is now accepting applications for 2025 IJA Festival Scholarships.  If you have wanted to attend an IJA Festival but have not had a chance and some support would help, apply!  Priority will be given to individuals who have not attended an IJA Festival before.  You can find the application here.  Please share info about this scholarship far and wide — it is open for jugglers around the world.  Applications close at 11:59pm PDT on March 15, 2025.  Scholarships will start being awarded (and recipients notified) well before the application deadline.  The last awardees will be informed by May at the latest.

This fund is named in honor of Todd Smith, one of the world’s top manufacturers of juggling equipment.  Todd was known for giving away props to aspiring jugglers and had the nickname of “the juggler’s friend”.  This scholarship fund will support new jugglers who have not had the chance to attend an IJA Festival.

Big thanks go to the fund’s donors for their generosity: Arthur Lewbel, Mike and Marilyn Sullivan, Unna Med, and a number of other jugglers.  Since 2022, the Scholarship Fund has provided support to 55 jugglers from around the world to attend the IJA’s Annual Festival.

Interested in supporting the J. Todd Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund?  Fantastic!  You can today donate here.  Any questions can be directed to treasurer@juggle.org.

 

 

Sign up for the Evansville walking tour & pub crawl  Mike Sullivan

Make plans and sign up now to be part of the fun and easy walking tour and pub crawl of downtown Evansville, set for the afternoon of Monday afternoon, July 14, 2025! 

Tickets are on sale now for just $25 each, and space is limited! Get yours at the IJA Store today!

We’ll step off at 2pm from the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel downtown and cruise through our juggling spaces in the Old National Events Center before popping in to have a look at the gorgeous Victory Theater.  Then we’ll have a leisurely stroll through downtown, pointing out and stopping into several great (but sometimes hidden!) restaurants and bars.

There’s no shortage of fun, casual and delicious places to eat in downtown, but not all of them are easy to find!  Your guide for the afternoon knows every nook and cranny and has scoped out the best of the best, so come along for a tour of where you can wet your whistle and satisfy your appetite all week.

Our tour is just $25 per person, and includes three local draft beer pints at stops along the way and check-ins in over a dozen other spots close to our IJA venues.  We’ll wind up at a local dinner favorite for an OPTIONAL group dinner with your old and new IJA friends.

So make plans to be in Evansville on the 14th in time to join us at 2pm. Sign in to your IJA member account at juggle.org, and then click here to buy your tickets now!  You’ll receive an email the week prior to the festival with full details on our tour.

See you then!

 

 

Catch ’em low  Don Lewis

I recently had a chance to teach the Basic Club Tricks workshop at the Groundhog festival in Atlanta. What a great festival! It can be a bit of a challenge to teach a workshop in a noisy gym, but it worked.

It seems that every time I teach a workshop, I notice different things that are getting in the way of jugglers trying to do a trick. The cool thing about this workshop is that all the trick movements can be practiced with one club, before adding the other two and trying to fit the new movement into the cascade pattern. Even jugglers with a shaky cascade can learn the one club version of each trick and then chain them together in a cool warm-up routine.

Usually the main problem in learning tricks is a cascade pattern that is way too narrow and out in front. I’ve written about that before.

This time the predominant problem was a cascade that never went below the waist. You see this sometimes, if you look around the gym. Someone is juggling with their shoulders hunched up and their elbows out like wings. They are practically craning their necks to look up at their clubs from below. Watching the pattern from below can be an initial help when learning front steals, but not for much else in a three club cascade.

Sure, you can juggle a pretty stable cascade up in the air like that, but it is more work than it needs to be and your arms get tired before they need to. Sometimes this is a defense response to having the clubs in front of your face — you automatically throw and catch high to avoid traffic jams.

Or, it can be that you concentrate so much on catching the club that you catch it early, before it has a chance to really drop, and then throw it quickly again from that high position. Lots of people will catch a club, then stop for a moment before throwing it again. Its more like watching a robot than a fluid pattern. It works, but it has limitations, and it is generally pretty fast.

The fix for this is very easy. It is more of a mind trick than an actual exercise. Picture Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing. That’s the one with a man in the center of a circle and the arms out wide towards the circle’s edges. The arms can each move in a circle too. Rather than juggling by just rotating the elbow, Vitruvian man could juggle using his whole arm.

To start, just move your whole arm in a circle. The rotation is from the shoulder. For cascade throws, you are just going to use the bottom half of the arm circle. Forget the idea of catching the club on its way down. You should simply wrap your hand around the club on its way down without stopping the club at all. As your arm comes down you start redirecting the club along the circle. It will pass all the way around the bottom half of the circle and wind up on the other side of your body at approximately waist level. At this point you simply open your hand and let the club lift straight up. The club will rotate all by itself and drop into your other hand where you then redirect it back the other way. How high the club goes depends on how much energy you add with your shoulder and whole arm. Small corrections can be made with the wrist, but it usually isn’t necessary.

This concept of not really catching the club but just redirecting it is remarkably similar to contact juggling. There you are not really holding the object, just encouraging it to follow you on an adventure.

Sometimes when I demonstrate this I take one club, swing it around, and release it as my arm moves up around the circle, but I keep my arm and empty hand going up and around the top half of the circle. The other arm does the same half a cycle later. Both arms are doing circles much like a club swinger. It gets the idea across quickly. I’ve yet to see anyone fail at this pretty simple exercise.

The general reaction is “wow, the pattern is sooo slow!” Well, yes because you are using that lower part of the circle rather than just throwing in the top part. It quickly becomes comfortable. Rather than using the entire lower circle you’ll quickly start releasing the club a little earlier, throwing it across and up rather than carrying it all the way around. Just make sure to follow the club all the way down to the edge of your arm’s range of motion before releasing it back into the juggling universe.

 

 

YJA Badge BookThe Juggler's Badge Book

Did you know that the IJA’s Youth Juggling Academy has a book?  It does!

The Juggler's Badge Book

The Juggler’s Badge Book is the ultimate companion for aspiring jugglers of any age!  Track your progress, unlock achievements, and earn badges as you learn the art of juggling.  With its engaging format and rewarding sticker system, The Juggler’s Badge Book makes learning to juggle an exciting and fulfilling adventure.  Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned juggler, let The Juggler’s Badge Book be your guide to skillful juggling and a collection of well-earned accomplishments.  Start achieving your juggling journey today!

The Juggler’s Badge Book is $25 and makes a great gift!  Purchase yours today!  Proceeds go to supporting further YJA initiatives and advancing the IJA’s mission to render assistance to fellow jugglers.

Published by the International Jugglers’ Association in collaboration with Modern Vaudeville Press.

 

 

IJA Board meetingsIJA Board meetings

IJA Board meetings are open to all IJA members and are hosted on Zoom.  To find out the times of this month’s vision and business meetings, or to attend, please email ija.chair@juggle.org and say which meeting you’re interested in.

 

 

Upcoming juggling festivals

For a list of upcoming juggling festivals, please visit our friends over at The Juggling Edge.

While you’re there, visit their list of juggling clubs.

 

 

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