#JongliereninDortmund
Wir treffen uns jeden Donnerstag von 20 - 22 Uhr.
Die Räumlichkeiten befinden sich in einer ehemaligen Kirche und bieten ausreichend Platz für verschiedene Zirkus-Disziplinen.
Der Treff ist offen für alle Level - komm einfach vorbei!
Adresse: Gut-Heil-Straße 14, 44145 Dortmund
Thought of the day
Wording what you do makes you see clearer while learning, struggling with a pattern, keeping it up, settling in it, switching from slaving to the pattern to utterly fully entirely controlling it to be, go, happen where you want to and not where it takes you. ( I think )
For Bungay Balls Up 2025 I provided a cute pink "lo-fi" pixel/thermal print camera for people to play with.
For "No Effort November" I've scanned the ones that people left behind (in no particular order), and uploaded them to a suitably shonky photo gallery at https://www.richardloxley.com/lofi/bbu2025/
Share and enjoy!
State-Siteswap-Beyond
An idea that has intrigued/haunted me for a while now is that there could be a higher 'level' of conceptual juggling, i.e. that something could exist 'above' siteswap in the same way siteswap is 'above' state. Juggling patterns are essentially collections of states transitioning between one another, therefore what might a collection of siteswaps look like? Can you express that numerically, like you can with state or siteswap?
So what I'd like to do is show the way I've found to do that. It may not be the best way, or the right way, but it works for what I want it to do. When we think about siteswap's relation to state, it helps to break it down into throws. A single throw can basically be thought of as a transformation of a state. The throw 4 on state 1236 (I'm going to be using a numerical notation for state here, by the way, it's just much denser. Each number represents the position of an object) transforms it into state 1245 (xxoxx). Therefore, what I'm looking for are numbers that can transform one siteswap into another.
Basic transformations
For this to work, I had to figure out what the most basic transformations you can apply to a juggle are. The first sacrifice to make was period-altering transforms. There's just no reliable way to change the period of a pattern. That done, what can you change about a pattern? Obviously, the values themselves could be changed, or the number of objects could be changed. These are the most basic parts of the siteswap.
To determine which transformations are 'more basic', we think about composite transformations and complete systems of transformations. Sometimes, a group of transforms can be mistaken for one. My favorite example is the "441 transform," where you take P-1 beats away from the last throw and give 1 more beat to each other throw. This works for any pattern, any period. However, you can make this transform using two others: raising each digit by one and lowering the last digit by P. Why would you want to do that? Because the two other transformations are more applicable and versatile.
An important aspect of any group of transformations, if they're to be useful for me, is that they can produce any siteswap from any other (same-period) siteswap. If you can cut out one transform out, and still reach any siteswap, you should.
Based on experimentation and intuition, the system I use is based on three transforms, which I'll use +, ^, and @ to represent.
+: raise every number by 1
^: switch the first number and any other number, then add the space in between them to the first number, and subtract it from the other. (97531 -- 67561)
@: put the first number last
The notation
Through a lot of thinking and reducing juggling to equations, and some cleverness (I think so anyway,) I eventually came to the solution that should have been obvious from the start. Each of these transforms can basically be reduced to a single value indicating how many times to do it, or in the case of ^, how far away the switched throw is from the first.
The important part about these transforms is that they only logically exist within certain boundaries:
+ is infinite, and can be any number at all
^ is less than or equal to P
@ is less than P, because at that point it becomes the same pattern
Using this, we can compress a combination of these three transforms into a single number. Here is the equation for it:
@+^P+(P-1+P2)= Transform Number
Obviously, with the inclusion of P squared, the numbers for transforms tend to be much larger than everyday siteswap values. The alphabet will be a common appearance in transform-groups, unless you want to divide the numbers another way.
Going past, going backwards, and the end.
This kind of mindset demands that we ask the question: what's beyond transformations? Shouldn't there be something that transforms a group of siteswap-transforms? And something that modifies that? in theory, yes, there should be. I've got theories about some properties that the system might have. For instance, consider the number of different numbers compressed in state, siteswap, and siteswap-transforms: State can be taken at face value, siteswap basically compresses orbits alongside a base number, and there are three transforms that we compress together. The obvious assumption I would make is that a meta-transform would have to compress four numbers, but that could just be coincidence.
Another burning question is, "Can we go the other way?" Is there something underlying state? Maybe. I'm not sure what that would be, and although I don't think it exists, I would love to be disproven.
Overall, this system of transforming siteswaps is useless for most jugglers. However, for nerds who love conceptualizing the essence of pattern structure, I think it's an absolutely fascinating way to look at the system.
If anyone wants a look at the equations or other behind the hood details, I'd be happy to show you. There's a really elegant way of looking at the three basic transforms.
RustyJuggling - - Parent #
Edit: The equation is
@ + ^P + +(P-1+P2)
Didn't think about the repercussions of labelling one of them as "+"... Whoops. I use different symbols in my notes.
RustyJuggling - - Parent #
Further corrections: I'm going to change the plus-one transform from + to ~. It's an arbitrary symbol but better than nothing. Also, the equation should actually be @ + ^P + ~(P+P2) to work properly.
Furthermore, I think there's actually a structure to how these systems tie together. Imagining a siteswap in terms of three fundamental qualities, those being order, reach, and strength, you can build a system that only effects one of these qualities at a time. Order is the position of a throw, ie when you throw it relative to the pattern. Reach is the net distance 'through the pattern' that the object goes. So the reach of the 5 in 531 is 2, where the reach of the 1 is 1. Strength is just a way of stating the number of orbits a throw makes. Going back to 531, the strength of each number would be 1, 1, and 0.
To create a more perfect system, you need to use the +period transform instead of the all+1 transform. All+1 messes with both the reach and strength of a pattern, whereas +Period only changes strength. Cycling through the pattern obviously only changes order, and swapping throws only changes reach.
With that context, we can then look at siteswap in terms of reach and strength. Siteswap can actually be reduced to just terms of reach and strength in the equation SS= R+SP, where R is reach and S is strength. Then if you contextualize state as a system of only reach, you might say that state=R.
Lining these equations up, you might notice the pattern forming. If you call reach, strength, and order qualities 1, 2, and 3 respectively, you can write them as:
J1=q1
J2=q1+q2P
J3=q1+q2P+q3(P+P2)
Where Jx is a system with x qualities.
Using this, we can guess that the system of meta-transforms above J3 would follow the structure
J4=q1+q2P+q3(P+P2)+q4(P+2P2+P3)
Because P+2P2+P3-1 is the highest value that qualities 1 through 3 could ever produce together.
Unfortunately, we don't really have any context for what the fourth quality would be, or how it would relate to J3, so it remains theoretical until we get an idea of how to transform the transforms of J3. Plus, at that point it would probably be easier to list all of the components than to compress them into a single number.
BJC 2026 tickets go on sale on Sunday!📢We’re excited to announce that the BJC 2026 tickets officially go on sale this Sunday (09/11/2025) 🥳
The British Juggling Convention will be taking place at All Hallows Catholic High School, Penwortham (near Preston) from the 3rd to the 9th April 2026!
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1462063918721431&set=a.549336293327536
There is now also a BJC 2026 facebook event page (if you like that kind of thing) https://www.facebook.com/events/2264544480693053
#BJC2026
The BJC 2026 website is now live: www.bjc2026.co.uk
So you can read all about BJC before buying your tickets tomorrow. It looks like there might not be a Gala Show - so more time for juggling!
BJC 2026 tickets now available from the Juggling Edge pre-reg system, you can find a link to it and the ticket prices on: www.bjc2026.co.uk/tickets.php
Here are all the links posted during October 2025:
The following hashtags were used:
Pockets
I've been thinking about a concept in juggling I think is often overlooked, initially sparked by seeing Tamuz Vardi's crazy solid 867, which is the 'pockets' you throw through in a given siteswap. I think part of the reason it hasn't been explored much might be that with lower numbers it can just be reduced to inside/outside throws, but as you reach higher numbers, there are a greater number of spaces between objects you can use to slot in your next throw. I think the best example is going into tower patterns (531, 97531...) from the cascade, where a lot of people throw the first object straight through the middle, although I think usually people use a further outside pocket for DBs. I think it would be interesting to see more experimentation in this area, although not every pattern is well-suited for it. Siteswaps like 744 or 663, for example, only really have inside/outside versions of each throw. A mid-pocket 6 in 645 might be interesting, although you would probably need a pretty wide pattern to make it fit with balls or clubs.
Along with that, I don't know any good way to tell what pockets a pattern will have just by looking at the numbers, which can slow down the research process significantly. I've been thinking about using the pattern's state, but it's difficult to translate that into the usable gaps between objects. I wonder if anyone has an ideas about that, how to quantify a pattern's gaps?
Anyway, I thought this was worth putting out there, even if just to open up some ideas for stylizing siteswaps.
Sometimes, in 7b cascade, it happens or your only chance for a throw is, to aim it through the next two incoming balls for that hand ( rev to the next incoming ball, but crossing under the over next ) - you can try and do it on purpose.
As for seeing its pockets by the siteswap, .. isn't it that often a siteswap is started from a base pattern and with a highest throw resp' digit - that then always leaves a gap "arriving" for the other hand ( I think ).
sorry that this is kinda out of the blue, but I went to the Cirque Du Soleil event in Washington a few weeks ago, and a guy juggled around 7 batons for a ridiculous amount of time. I have NEVER been more impressed.
Little Paul - - Parent #
Cirque never make it that easy to work out who’s in the cast for a particular show…
As far as I can tell LUZIA was the show in Washington most recently, and it seems Cylios Pytlak might still be with that show?
He’s a trad circus style “speed juggler” (so wonderfully fast and spinny, very much my sort of thing) and his 8 club flash looks like it’s about the same height as most jugglers 5 club pattern
This was him in the same show 5 years ago:
https://youtu.be/NHOJAVjz2VE
Danny Colyer - - Parent #
Here's a different juggler (Rudolf Janecek) who was performing in the same show 9 years ago, setting a world record for the most individual juggling rotations in 30 seconds with 5 clubs (429 rotations):
https://www.facebook.com/CirqueduSoleil/videos/10155282109927501
(You might need a Facebook login to see it).
The events page is showing All About Hats as happening in 3 days.
According to a Facebook post that I saw last week, and according to the event website, that event's not happening. Can an organiser update the calendar?
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