Mood:
surprisedI am not a juggling historian. I am no Karl. But as someone who has been in the game for a bit longer than a lot of these upstart WJFers, it's interesting to look at trick trends. One of the more random trick trends over the past year has been the overabundance of jugglers practicing flat reverse shoulder throws or "lazies" as some people like to call them.
I am actually a huge fan of the trick when it is done well with maximum backward thrust, with catches as close to the knobs as possible and a general disinterested forward focus :-)
However, I think it would be fair to say, even if we don't like it, that internet is THE defining force in global juggling trends although certainly large conventions also have an impact. So when exactly did flat reverse shoulder throws first appear on the internet and who was doing them?
My answer? Quite simply, Kristian Wanvik in the trailer for Juggling in Stockholm, Oskar Wrango's first publicly available juggling film. It is available to watch on YouTube with Kristian doing the trick around 0:48. See it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVElkx96UAE
I would be very interested in anyone with an internet video containing this trick and dating earlier than the release of juggling in stockholm.
Since then, I have seen jugglers from both "camps", artistic and sport, doing this trick. Marcus Monroe and Brett Sheets. Sean Blue and Vova Galchenko. Jay Gilligan and Doug Sayers. As far as I can see, it was the coolest way to juggle the siteswap 3 in 2007. My prediction for 2008 is that "shoulder pads" will become the cool new way to juggle "3". The earliest appearance of them flashed is on Wes's "Proper Fun" video. The earliest appearance of more than a qualify of shoulder pads is on my Normal Like You video. Again, please prove me wrong if you can.
As with any trend, I think that within the next few years, people will become so oversaturated with lazies that it will enter the "basic tricks" category even though for someone like me entering in on the ground floor, this was a very hard trick to solidify, taking over a year and a half of practice!
This is the other amazing thing about juggling. Tricks that we slave over in 2008 are going to come easy to young jugglers in the future because they will be done by so many people that the newbies will assume it is easy and their brains will make the learning process quicker. This is how juggling will evolve.
Trends become prerequisites. Watch them.
