A long long time ago in a lounge far far away. I was trying to get an acrylic to balance on top of another acrylic with Andrew Batchelor (of multi ball contact book) we found that if you used a ball with a big butterfly chip in it that it was waaaaaay easier. This led to a bit of a discussion that it was cheating. He said that a magician would just make a gimmick to make the effect appear real whereas a juggler would actually do the trick no matter how hard. This is why most juggler don't hold magic in particularly high esteem.

Audiences however don't. actually. care. they want to see something amazing, the fact that you're an obsessed nerd who practices an insane amount doesn't matter at all....

discuss

Two names come to mind.
Paul Cinquevalli (Paul Kestner),....Juggler,
and T. Nelson Downs,...Magician.

One of Cinquevalli 'top' tricks,
was a double balence(!), using three billiard balls!
Impossible, according to Physics.
Still, he 'did' it.
Folks loved it,...
he never let anyone in on his clever little,....

T.Nelson Downs.
Magicians swore,..
and practised(!) diligently,
to duplicate his "5 Coin Star"...!
...,boy was everone disappointed,
examining his coins, after he died!

"People loved to be fooled,...fool 'em."
(Professor Hoffman?,..
or Herrmann?)
,..in any case,
TRUE!

smiles,
gallagher

Working with Joe Porper to make the Cinquevalli gimmick.

Is this something that will be available or is this a one-off piece for yourself Pete?

Based on this, it would appear that jugglers are better at deception than most magicians

As a juggler and a magician I see both sides of it. I wouldn't say that jugglers are better at deception so to speak but when juggling people don't expect deception so a little cheating here and there isn't really suspected so it's easy to get away with those little things.

Magicians however are expected to try to deceive so people are more attentive and aware that there is going to be deception.

I have been guilty of making a trick work no matter how hard and cheating just a little. I do a trick where I roll a ball down the length of a cane and back. When discussing methods with a magician friend of mine he suggested a method that was easy and totally cheating, but I wanted to make the cane as minimally gimmicked as possible so I went with a different method that requires more skill but there wasn't anything mechanical involved so if it failed it was due to my execution alone.
I also do a trick that involves balancing a ball on the edge of a fan of cards. There's a smidge of cheating but it's mostly skill. A lot of practice went into that one.

I over heard a conversation between Scott Alexander and Bob Kohler. Bob was talking about how when filming a juggling instructional video the juggler got most of the tricks right on the first take while the magicians he filmed often took multiple takes just to get their own tricks to look right on camera. Scott identified the difference. "That's because jugglers practice."

The last phrase here seems a bit aggressive, doesn't it? I know jugglers who do not practice this much (and fail a lot) and magicians who practice very hard and always seem ready to show their skills, without failure. Isn't it a oversimplification?

I think this depends on the magician. There are effects that can be done with both gimmicks and pure sleight of hand. Of course the one takes much more time. I use a push off double that I've practiced daily for 5 years. I could have did a get ready but it wasn't good enough for me

It was a more of an anecdote than anything, but in that particular case it was based on their observation not mine.

Not sure with juggling.
put Contact juggling and Magic have very interesting parallels.
I remember seeing a japanese contact juggler would fuse sleight on hand magic to produce, multiply, one to multiple balls.

When I was about 16, I saw C. Thomas Magrum's school assembly program. He showed me the coin roll. I practiced, and could do it quite well. Then I read a Walter Gibson/Maxwell Grant (same person) book of "SHADOW" MYSTERIES". (Maxwell Grant was Walter Gibson's pen name. Maxwell was Max Holden's given name, and Grant was U.F. "Gen" Grant's surname) Walter wrote a lot of books on magic, and, in the '30s and '40s a number of Shadow Mystery books, AND, he had a weekly radio show on Sunday afternoon. The first actor to play the Shadow, was ORSON WELLES. The announcer would introduce the program with: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? --The SHADOW KNOWS!"

The book I had purchased had several Shadow mysteries, INCLUDING one about magicians. In the story, ONE of the magicians was doing the COIN ROLL WITH FOUR COINS, SIMULTANEOUSLY. I could do one coin. I started working on it,and within a few months, I could do four coins simultaneously. --It drove magicians "crazy"!!!

In the spring of '50, I was 18. I joined the IBM and attended the IBM convention in Chicago. I stayed over a few days to catch Magrum's school show. We stayed up for hours, one night, and he taught me his FIVE COIN STAR. He did it with BOTH HANDS, SIMULTANEOUSLY. It took me several weeks to do it with one hand, and another month to do it with both hands simultaneously. I did it for years. THERE WAS NO GAFFED COIN! It was pure skill!

Bud Tracy of Sioux City, Iowa, put out a "Magicians' Directory" in the early '50s. (I'm in it.) We met some years later, at a regional convention, and, he had the silver dollars that had belonged to T. Nelson Downs. He showed me five silver dollars. I asked him, "Where is the other dollar?" HE said, "What other dollar?" I said, "Downs had a dollar with a depression on one side. He would use wax to "get" the "thumb" coin." He asked, "How do you know about THAT?" I said, Faucett Ross knew T. Nelson, and Ross told ME."

I did a lot of coin flourishes and the Downs palm with both hands, back then, but, now the hands have a bit of arthritis. I did teach JOHNNY ACE PALMER the four coin roll, back in the '80s. I haven't seen him since.

Back in the '70s, when I would often spend a few days in the CHARLIE MILLER SUITE at Magic Inc., Jay and I were finishing breakfast one morning when the downstairs Carmen Street doorbell rang. It was Walter Gibson. Jay, of course, knew Walter from his New York days. We had a very delightful morning. I think Walter was a bit surprised when I did the FOUR COIN ROLL, AND THEN "TOPPED IT" WITH THE FIVE COIN STAR WITH BOTH HANDS!!!

Of course I had learned all the fancy card flourishes as a teenager. I have an 8 x 10 of me doing the cascade shuffle, with an 18" spread.

"My" Norwegian YOYO is "in" Denny Loomis's rope knot dvd. and, on my dvd, also. I've shared it with Denny, Clem Magrum, Gene Anderson, and one or two others. The YOYO is "juggling" with a 48" length of ungaffed rope.

I usta do the "Will Rogers" one handed overhand knot, but, that's "gone" (old age)!

I wish you were here, GALLAGHER! I'm sure you could "pick up" the YOYO! It's a funny bit.

Down the road......

I just "realized" that this forum's title is "Catch this if you can!"

I regard flourishes like the coin roll, the five coin star, the three coin toss up and individual coin catch, the various fancy card "shuffles", and "my" YOYO, as CONTACT JUGGLING.

I learned what I have come to call the YOYO, (or "Norwegian Butterfly") from a customer in the EdMar Magic Shop in Norfolk, VA. in 1951. He was a bartender who was looking for close up tricks that he could do at his workplace. I "traded" him for a knot trick. --I've used the YOYO since then. (Best swap I ever made!)

Here's one of my early experiments in combining magic and contact juggling. I don't use many of these in performance due the severe angle restrictions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfS35dqaNfA

Sweet video, great experiment.
I think if you do it on stage or for busking people will love it.

Skill revealed.

Secret concealed.

Probably the best fusion of magic and juggling that I came up with was a levitation illusion that I included on my DVDs (volume 3 if I remember correctly) It was actually just a slight tweak of an existing move but it made it look like the fingers weren't touching the ball. The angles are pretty good but you can't do it for long otherwise they might see what's going on. There's no gimmicks or anything, just a simple illusion with a ball and some sneaky placement of the fingers.

Very good topic. Which requires philosophical reflection. I think those who are familiar with the book Will Goldston - Juggling Secrets - will understand the full depth of the synthesis of magic and juggling. The main secret of the juggler is balance. And the magicians understood how to achieve balance sometimes by the shortest path.

I had a career as both a juggler and magician. I had more success as a juggler because I felt I didn't have to "hide" anything.