So, after learning a trick, how do you improve your style in order to make it look more appealing?"

A question I wish more jugglers asked.

The first problem is the term 'style.' 'Style' implies that it is attitude, coolness, personal beauty, clothing, etc., that is what distinguishes jugglers, and what makes the same trick look interesting when someone with 'style' does it. Well, yes. This can be true, but it's such a small part of the distinction that you're asking about -- and it's also very misleading.

Look to the other physical/visual performance arts for what makes things interesting. Dance, mime, clown, stand-up, and basic acting are all very physical arts that the audience interprets through vision (and other senses, too but here we're just concerned with vision). What makes something visually interesting?

At the simplest level it is recognition of the familiar. Take the trick "the box." The way most people perform it, it should be called "the trough," or "the U," because that's what it looks like when it's done poorly. Broaden the base and make it flat and fast, make the side throws straight up, keep the arms as still as possible so that your only movement is to turn the hands over and pop the ball up or across -- now *that* looks like a box.

So metaphor is as basic as it gets. When you do X, it looks like a box. Why is this interesting? If you just held up a box, or a line drawing of a box, it would just be a box. But you are juggling and you suddenly do so in a way that makes people think "hey, he's throwing those balls in a square, like a box!" what you've done is make a visual metaphor of a common object using an unusual medium (balls). Why do people like this? First, because they recognize it. Second, because its appearance is unexpected in this context (juggling). If you just drew a box on a chalkboard it would not be interesting simply because that's the medium that a caricature of a box is expected to be shown in. The novelty of the medium (juggling) makes it interesting, and the more the trick actually looks like the sides of a square box, the more readily the audience will recognize it and be surprised by it.

Andrew said his Mills Mess became much more interesting when he emphasized separate circles for each direction of MM. That is, he made the circular pattern of hands and ball trajectories on each side more distinct and recognizable as circles. The way it's usually done, MM looks like a single circle of balls and twist of arms that changes direction every three beats. By separating the circles it becomes a new trick. It also moves the action away from the center of the body, creating variety. (Remember Bobby May's "high, low, fast, slow," to which you should add left, right, upstage, downstage, backwards, and upside down.) Variety. It works. More difficult visual concepts are line and extension (see dance), progression and development (see acting), being and volition and power (see mime), juxtaposition and novelty and change-of-story (see comedy), and illusion and symmetry (see everything). Now on *top* of these things you add the character or persona of the juggler. What you called 'style'. Most jugglers are merely "themselves," but bigger and louder. That's fine if the juggler is an interesting person, but most of us really aren't that interesting to anyone but ourselves and our friends and loved ones. The juggler that can be different people, or relate in different ways to the trick, is an actor with props. The juggler that only strives to be something that is generally thought of as desirable (cool, superior, expert), and doesn't carry it off, gets the same kind of response that a bad actor gets.

And on top of the character/persona of the juggler you then add the story-line, with a beginning, middle, and end, and you have an act.

So back to your question, "how do you make a trick more appealing?"

Sometimes you can take a big hint from the name of the trick, and work to make that image clearer. Other times you can try moving a trick around, or try it in a different plane or to one side. Try using one ball in a contrasting color and see if it makes a pattern that is worth emphasizing. A video camera or a painfully honest friend is very useful here. Apply the Bobby May principle. See if you can recognize and then clarify a visual metaphor so that other people recognize it immediately.

Remember that a metaphor is the suggestion of a likeness to something else, but in a different medium or context. Think of pistons -- now do the 3 or 4-ball piston and look at it from the side. From the other side. From underneath. Worry about it. Try to go somewhere else, but "pistons" pulls you back. You try to do other tricks but they all eventually turn back into pistons.

Or penguins. When you have the trick solid, try it walking around in tiny, stiff-legged, steps, with your head and neck rigidly attached to your swaying body. More penguin than you really wanted? But probably enough to make a classroom full of kids (and their teachers and parents) think you are the funniest thing they've ever seen.

Finally, audience. Some stuff works best with adults, some with kids, some with parents, some with other jugglers, etc. Figuring out who responds best to various schtick is learned by trial and error. Don't assume you are "really" a children's entertainer, when you could be a Soupy Sales or Peewee Herman, or Shakes the Clown.

Hope that helped

Eric