I have no trouble of seeing juggling us a unique thing, but I still didn't get the point, how it would be differently unique than for example the handstand, you mentioned.
What I find interesting, is to understands, what makes it unique.
While waiting for the handstand tribe's answer,
from my point of view, I could define wire-dancing as a game of playing with the limits of our body-balance on a narrow surface. (I'm not engaging here with a definitive definition! Just one try out)
Making then alliance with the slack-liners, there can be found wire-walking in arts, sports, extreme sports, in some meditation practices, as a game or even in some religious rituals (Mexican Marimero's still use ritual wire-dancing in some religious celebrations!) And in any context, it would still be seen as wire-walking and not necessary art. It would have the same” essence”, the same state of body and mind, the state on perpetual movements of controlling the off balances. And it would still be seen as wire-walking even if we change the surface (walking on bottles, walking on a rope, on a wire, on stones.. on whatever that forces the body in fragile balance, fighting from falling down). And for each of us, on it's own level: there is no special physical condition required.
Question: can juggling exist without an object? Or rather, can this ANY object, be a NON object?
I also really like to think that juggling is fundamentally useless.
Still, for a useless ”thing”, juggling has been existing thousands of years. Shouldn't some kind of cultural evolution erase useless things from humanity?
Why on earth juggling still keeps existing?!! :)
But if willing to debate, there must be many advantages for body and mind, for some limited groups of people. I cant' see the difference you see with handstand, as juggling needs also body and mind abilities, as concentration, precision, some muscles and a lot of resistance to frustration.. Actually quite many abilities, that many of us doesn't have it all, as juggling still stays rather a rare phenomenon, despite it's accessibility
Maybe circus is rarely OF something, but it definitely is FROM something. I could see juggling as one branch of the big tree of object manipulation. Seeing here object manipulation as a human quality of manipulating object and tools. One of the qualities that has helped greatly the humankind to take over our planet...
For wire-dancing, the tree would be the big tree of balancing, that is also an ability, that made the human species to stand on his two feet.
I found it very interesting, that there can be found a very primordial base FROM what our very useless activities has been developed from. And as one of human qualities is the curiosity and going further (circus) , it could give an explication why these useless activities had survived in cultural evolution of humankind.
Many apologies for a long delay in my response. Thanks for continuing the discussion! It’s always very nice to hear from you.
Maybe I was unclear, I don’t think I meant to give the tautological statement that juggling is uniquely unique, it is just unique in a normal way – one of its kind.
Maybe I am stating the obvious here, sorry (I don’t mean to sound condescending), obviously different people see different things in different ways, and sometimes we see the same things in different ways, but we also see different things in the same way. I see juggling in a particular way, but it could be that a handstand professional sees handstand in the way that I see juggling, albeit the things in themselves are different.
Currently I am thinking of three headings that clarify what, to me, makes juggling seem unique amongst circus and other performing arts (broadly speaking):
• Unique current FEATURES of juggling (something external, what are features)
• Unique current HISTORY of juggling (currently found and made history [what we are doing here to certain extent])
• Unique current NATURE of juggling (something more internal to juggling, how)
One could probably add word ‘perceived’ in front of all those headings, none of this will be absolute or objective.
Hopefully the next couple of posts will answer to the other questions you had! There will definitely be a response to the question of invisible props!
Looking forwards to continuing our dialogue. Take care.
Thank you for sharing these very interesting thoughts.
It is a very revolutionary thought, that juggling is a unique thing.
I guess this statement could be easily put in all different circus disciplines: wire dancing is as unique thing, as trapeze or acrobatics?
The classification of arts in ”uniques” and in arts that are ”of” or ”about something” is very interesting.
The question that it reveals in me, is that is dancing then also a unique thing?
There can be a ballet ”about” Romeo and Juliette. But there can be a dance piece about movement, and therefore about dance itself.
Imagine a dance piece about geometrical forms in space. There can be a juggling piece about geometrical forms in space. Does that mean, that juggling also can be about something else than juggling?
Could we think that some performing art forms are only ”of” something :theater, opera, literature, .. (and again, a poem about words would be also unique? , a musical composition can also be about the melody and harmonies.. about music) .... and some art forms can be either ”of” something or about themselves (juggling of juggling, dance of dance) ?
Can circus disciplines be also about something else than what they are?
You are here confirming that no. (”Juggling itself is not for anything else.”)
I guess the modern circus wanted to believe, that circus can be also for something else.
I still want to believe in that in someway and please, prove me wrong!
Let's image ”Romeo and Juliette” on the wire. If we can imagine Romeo and Juliette” on the point shoes, I guess the difference is not that big.
But even if this piece would be a dance/ wire-dance piece about Romeo and Juliette , it would still always stay a piece about classical ballet or a piece about wire dance, with a collage of a story ON it.
(and here is a big debate that I don't get in now...)
To put it in a another way: physical virtuosity can only talk about physical virtuosity, in any art form. (This was somehow presented in a great book: L'énergie qui danse: un dictionnaire d'anthropologie théâtrale, Eugenio Barba, Nicola Savarese)
But I still would like to insist that the virtuosity can talk also about something else than virtuosity. Or maybe contemporary circus is somehere here: Juggling is about juggling, but juggling is composed with many things that can be told or at least put in advance.
Juggling can be about failure and success, it can be about geometrical forms in space....Or maybe it is always about these and some other things that make the juggling art unique?
I still twist the thinking.
I have seen juggling with white plastique clubs and been transcended to a state to kind of forget that it is about juggling with pieces of plastique. In some point of virtuosity, I have felt something else, a poesy, created by this gesture of virtuosity, that brings the spectator beyond the virtuosity, beyond the methods used (juggling) and touches something deeper that I can't really describe.. maybe humanity or life....
And one more example : A painting about flowers and fruits (”nature morte”) can be seen as a representation of flowers and fruits or it can hide a deeper interpretation: most often the paintings of ”nature morte”, are interpretations about a circle of life and death.
Here, someone more clever to help me, please, because there must a lot of analysis about these kind of symbolic way of doing and seeing art, representing something else, that is actually represented.
So if a picture of flowers and fruits can be about something else than flowers and fruits, why not juggling?
And yes, I definitely vote for option 3. Each circus discipline need to define itself by the people practicing it. And we have a lot of work to do!
Thank you for your response! Very nice to hear your thoughts. And thanks for taking the time to read, and to write back. Really appreciate the conversation! Interesting and challenging.
The point I was trying to make is that Juggling exists effortlessly in many contexts, one of them being an art form, for example a performance. Other contexts for example sports and mathematics, meaning people do and explore juggling from an idea other than art. The idea that juggling is not OF things, does not alone make it unique. Something being seen as unique is linked to the framework it is seen in. I believe juggling exists in a framework that is unique to juggling, which makes it unique.
When a thing is put in the context of performance, on one level the thing is then ONLY a part of a performance, existing under the conditions of performance (whether it is an abstract piece or a narrative like Romeo & Juliet). The particular qualities of any thing will be used through the idea of performance. The way I see it is: 1) Juggling is unique because it lives as an entity in multiple contexts, without its essence being lost or altered 2) Juggling is unique within the contexts it lives in, because of its essence.
Juggling and circus, in my opinion, CAN be of something else, they can be presented and/or interpreted in various ways. Like the geometric shapes you mentioned. A show done with juggling exploring geometric shapes is OF geometric shapes. But, juggling performance about ‘bare juggling’, is a style chosen for a particular show - being self-referential does not remove the context of performance.
In terms of being unique amongst performing arts, the uniqueness of juggling is for me displayed in the fact that it can be removed from the performance, or arts context, and still be juggling. Another aspect of how juggling is unique within the field or performing arts, is that the discipline itself is constantly reshaping itself in a very profound way. Compared to dance or theatre, there are lot of techniques, methods and ‘rules’, that conform any new artist entering the industry. Juggling/ jugglers, have managed to resist structure and uniformity. Jugglers are very hard to compare with each other because everyone does their own thing, everyone is a specialist in their way of juggling. The field of juggling techniques is an absolute anarchy, in that way, I am destined to fail in trying to define juggling, because after definition it would not be anarchy anymore – also, juggling would have then lost some of its uniqueness. So, I am hoping for a failure with this writing project.
Comparing juggling with other circus disciplines that include a prop: unicycle, tight wire, trapeze etc; juggling is special in that you can change the prop to nearly anything (Luke Wilson’s proposition in Tactile (2017), was a ‘bone saw’), and the thing presented would still be/ perceived (as) juggling. Then again, the problem with any definition within the framework of performing arts, or visual arts, is the fact that there is interpretation involved, and the interpretation is subjective. Someone interpreting a performance with tight wire, might completely forget there is a tight wire on stage, see it as a symbol for something else (‘still life’ paintings, ‘landscapes’, ‘banana’, ‘mirror’ etc.). In terms of practicing, a juggler would still be practising juggling, even when they work with a bone saw. I could be wrong, but I am assuming it might not be so obvious with somebody that has replaced their unicycle with a chair, that they’re still unicycling? They might still be unicyclists, but they would not be training unicycling. Juggler would still be juggling.
Juggling CAN be art, if intended to be so. The interesting thing with juggling is that the mere intention to juggle does not make it art. One can have an intention to juggle outside the arts context, but it would still be juggling. Compared to say, intention of visual arts, intention to paint could be painting a house etc. intention of dance, one could be walking, sitting down, and it does not automatically become art. But with juggling, there is nothing else to it. When you walk, there is an intention to go somewhere, painting the house is in intention to keep the house in good condition. Juggling does not have that inbuilt utility, it is completely outside the world of utility, anarchistic (in this sense too) in my opinion. It is so inherently useless that I find it absolutely thrilling!
ps: I have been proposed a challenge from handstand, that it also falls in few different contexts, yoga, sports quite naturally. But to me it seems the difference with juggling and handstand is, that handstand always has an element of intended body development involved, or body/mind balance, or, you need have a certain amount of physical ability to practice handstand. Juggling requires almost nothing and is almost useful for nothing. Any handstanders feel free to comment 😊
It's a very interesting project. I can't wait to read more ! Have a great day!
Hi,
thank you for your answer.
It cleared me up some of your points.
I have no trouble of seeing juggling us a unique thing, but I still didn't get the point, how it would be differently unique than for example the handstand, you mentioned.
What I find interesting, is to understands, what makes it unique.
While waiting for the handstand tribe's answer,
from my point of view, I could define wire-dancing as a game of playing with the limits of our body-balance on a narrow surface. (I'm not engaging here with a definitive definition! Just one try out)
Making then alliance with the slack-liners, there can be found wire-walking in arts, sports, extreme sports, in some meditation practices, as a game or even in some religious rituals (Mexican Marimero's still use ritual wire-dancing in some religious celebrations!) And in any context, it would still be seen as wire-walking and not necessary art. It would have the same” essence”, the same state of body and mind, the state on perpetual movements of controlling the off balances. And it would still be seen as wire-walking even if we change the surface (walking on bottles, walking on a rope, on a wire, on stones.. on whatever that forces the body in fragile balance, fighting from falling down). And for each of us, on it's own level: there is no special physical condition required.
Question: can juggling exist without an object? Or rather, can this ANY object, be a NON object?
I also really like to think that juggling is fundamentally useless.
Still, for a useless ”thing”, juggling has been existing thousands of years. Shouldn't some kind of cultural evolution erase useless things from humanity?
Why on earth juggling still keeps existing?!! :)
But if willing to debate, there must be many advantages for body and mind, for some limited groups of people. I cant' see the difference you see with handstand, as juggling needs also body and mind abilities, as concentration, precision, some muscles and a lot of resistance to frustration.. Actually quite many abilities, that many of us doesn't have it all, as juggling still stays rather a rare phenomenon, despite it's accessibility
Maybe circus is rarely OF something, but it definitely is FROM something. I could see juggling as one branch of the big tree of object manipulation. Seeing here object manipulation as a human quality of manipulating object and tools. One of the qualities that has helped greatly the humankind to take over our planet...
For wire-dancing, the tree would be the big tree of balancing, that is also an ability, that made the human species to stand on his two feet.
I found it very interesting, that there can be found a very primordial base FROM what our very useless activities has been developed from. And as one of human qualities is the curiosity and going further (circus) , it could give an explication why these useless activities had survived in cultural evolution of humankind.
Many apologies for a long delay in my response. Thanks for continuing the discussion! It’s always very nice to hear from you.
Maybe I was unclear, I don’t think I meant to give the tautological statement that juggling is uniquely unique, it is just unique in a normal way – one of its kind.
Maybe I am stating the obvious here, sorry (I don’t mean to sound condescending), obviously different people see different things in different ways, and sometimes we see the same things in different ways, but we also see different things in the same way. I see juggling in a particular way, but it could be that a handstand professional sees handstand in the way that I see juggling, albeit the things in themselves are different.
Currently I am thinking of three headings that clarify what, to me, makes juggling seem unique amongst circus and other performing arts (broadly speaking):
• Unique current FEATURES of juggling (something external, what are features)
• Unique current HISTORY of juggling (currently found and made history [what we are doing here to certain extent])
• Unique current NATURE of juggling (something more internal to juggling, how)
One could probably add word ‘perceived’ in front of all those headings, none of this will be absolute or objective.
Hopefully the next couple of posts will answer to the other questions you had! There will definitely be a response to the question of invisible props!
Looking forwards to continuing our dialogue. Take care.
Thank you for sharing these very interesting thoughts.
It is a very revolutionary thought, that juggling is a unique thing.
I guess this statement could be easily put in all different circus disciplines: wire dancing is as unique thing, as trapeze or acrobatics?
The classification of arts in ”uniques” and in arts that are ”of” or ”about something” is very interesting.
The question that it reveals in me, is that is dancing then also a unique thing?
There can be a ballet ”about” Romeo and Juliette. But there can be a dance piece about movement, and therefore about dance itself.
Imagine a dance piece about geometrical forms in space. There can be a juggling piece about geometrical forms in space. Does that mean, that juggling also can be about something else than juggling?
Could we think that some performing art forms are only ”of” something :theater, opera, literature, .. (and again, a poem about words would be also unique? , a musical composition can also be about the melody and harmonies.. about music) .... and some art forms can be either ”of” something or about themselves (juggling of juggling, dance of dance) ?
Can circus disciplines be also about something else than what they are?
You are here confirming that no. (”Juggling itself is not for anything else.”)
I guess the modern circus wanted to believe, that circus can be also for something else.
I still want to believe in that in someway and please, prove me wrong!
Let's image ”Romeo and Juliette” on the wire. If we can imagine Romeo and Juliette” on the point shoes, I guess the difference is not that big.
But even if this piece would be a dance/ wire-dance piece about Romeo and Juliette , it would still always stay a piece about classical ballet or a piece about wire dance, with a collage of a story ON it.
(and here is a big debate that I don't get in now...)
To put it in a another way: physical virtuosity can only talk about physical virtuosity, in any art form. (This was somehow presented in a great book: L'énergie qui danse: un dictionnaire d'anthropologie théâtrale, Eugenio Barba, Nicola Savarese)
But I still would like to insist that the virtuosity can talk also about something else than virtuosity. Or maybe contemporary circus is somehere here: Juggling is about juggling, but juggling is composed with many things that can be told or at least put in advance.
Juggling can be about failure and success, it can be about geometrical forms in space....Or maybe it is always about these and some other things that make the juggling art unique?
I still twist the thinking.
I have seen juggling with white plastique clubs and been transcended to a state to kind of forget that it is about juggling with pieces of plastique. In some point of virtuosity, I have felt something else, a poesy, created by this gesture of virtuosity, that brings the spectator beyond the virtuosity, beyond the methods used (juggling) and touches something deeper that I can't really describe.. maybe humanity or life....
And one more example : A painting about flowers and fruits (”nature morte”) can be seen as a representation of flowers and fruits or it can hide a deeper interpretation: most often the paintings of ”nature morte”, are interpretations about a circle of life and death.
Here, someone more clever to help me, please, because there must a lot of analysis about these kind of symbolic way of doing and seeing art, representing something else, that is actually represented.
So if a picture of flowers and fruits can be about something else than flowers and fruits, why not juggling?
And yes, I definitely vote for option 3. Each circus discipline need to define itself by the people practicing it. And we have a lot of work to do!
Thank you for your response! Very nice to hear your thoughts. And thanks for taking the time to read, and to write back. Really appreciate the conversation! Interesting and challenging.
The point I was trying to make is that Juggling exists effortlessly in many contexts, one of them being an art form, for example a performance. Other contexts for example sports and mathematics, meaning people do and explore juggling from an idea other than art. The idea that juggling is not OF things, does not alone make it unique. Something being seen as unique is linked to the framework it is seen in. I believe juggling exists in a framework that is unique to juggling, which makes it unique.
When a thing is put in the context of performance, on one level the thing is then ONLY a part of a performance, existing under the conditions of performance (whether it is an abstract piece or a narrative like Romeo & Juliet). The particular qualities of any thing will be used through the idea of performance. The way I see it is: 1) Juggling is unique because it lives as an entity in multiple contexts, without its essence being lost or altered 2) Juggling is unique within the contexts it lives in, because of its essence.
Juggling and circus, in my opinion, CAN be of something else, they can be presented and/or interpreted in various ways. Like the geometric shapes you mentioned. A show done with juggling exploring geometric shapes is OF geometric shapes. But, juggling performance about ‘bare juggling’, is a style chosen for a particular show - being self-referential does not remove the context of performance.
In terms of being unique amongst performing arts, the uniqueness of juggling is for me displayed in the fact that it can be removed from the performance, or arts context, and still be juggling. Another aspect of how juggling is unique within the field or performing arts, is that the discipline itself is constantly reshaping itself in a very profound way. Compared to dance or theatre, there are lot of techniques, methods and ‘rules’, that conform any new artist entering the industry. Juggling/ jugglers, have managed to resist structure and uniformity. Jugglers are very hard to compare with each other because everyone does their own thing, everyone is a specialist in their way of juggling. The field of juggling techniques is an absolute anarchy, in that way, I am destined to fail in trying to define juggling, because after definition it would not be anarchy anymore – also, juggling would have then lost some of its uniqueness. So, I am hoping for a failure with this writing project.
Comparing juggling with other circus disciplines that include a prop: unicycle, tight wire, trapeze etc; juggling is special in that you can change the prop to nearly anything (Luke Wilson’s proposition in Tactile (2017), was a ‘bone saw’), and the thing presented would still be/ perceived (as) juggling. Then again, the problem with any definition within the framework of performing arts, or visual arts, is the fact that there is interpretation involved, and the interpretation is subjective. Someone interpreting a performance with tight wire, might completely forget there is a tight wire on stage, see it as a symbol for something else (‘still life’ paintings, ‘landscapes’, ‘banana’, ‘mirror’ etc.). In terms of practicing, a juggler would still be practising juggling, even when they work with a bone saw. I could be wrong, but I am assuming it might not be so obvious with somebody that has replaced their unicycle with a chair, that they’re still unicycling? They might still be unicyclists, but they would not be training unicycling. Juggler would still be juggling.
Juggling CAN be art, if intended to be so. The interesting thing with juggling is that the mere intention to juggle does not make it art. One can have an intention to juggle outside the arts context, but it would still be juggling. Compared to say, intention of visual arts, intention to paint could be painting a house etc. intention of dance, one could be walking, sitting down, and it does not automatically become art. But with juggling, there is nothing else to it. When you walk, there is an intention to go somewhere, painting the house is in intention to keep the house in good condition. Juggling does not have that inbuilt utility, it is completely outside the world of utility, anarchistic (in this sense too) in my opinion. It is so inherently useless that I find it absolutely thrilling!
ps: I have been proposed a challenge from handstand, that it also falls in few different contexts, yoga, sports quite naturally. But to me it seems the difference with juggling and handstand is, that handstand always has an element of intended body development involved, or body/mind balance, or, you need have a certain amount of physical ability to practice handstand. Juggling requires almost nothing and is almost useful for nothing. Any handstanders feel free to comment 😊