Passing Patterns, by Tarim

Tarim offers these patterns:

Turning Circles

Tarim likes the one where everyone stands in a circle, 3 clubs each and you pass in turn to each person around the circle, including yourself. It works with any number of people and any rhythm: every others (4-count), alternates (3-count), showers (2-count), ultimates (1-count). Though Tarim has never found enough nutters to try it with ultimates.

To sort out who passes with whom at the start, just draw parallel lines through the circle. So, if you can find 6 people with boring names like A,B,C,D,E and F:

1.           2.           3.           4.           5.           6.

  A---B        A\  B        A   B        A   B        A   B        A  /B 
                  \          \   \       |   |       /   /          /
F-------C    F\     \C    F   \   C    F |   | C    F   /   C    F/     /C
                \          \   \         |   |         /   /          /
  E---D        E  \D        E   D        E   D        E   D        E/  D

As you see, if you can make any sense of Tarim's crappy diagram, A passes with B, C, D, E, F and hirself. C passes with F, A, B, hirself, D and E. If you do it with an odd number of people then sumone starts off by passing to themselves.

Alternates is very sweet with this pattern, since the same clubs get passed all the time. If you have N people, N clubs will be passed. This not only looks pretty if you use different coloured clubs for the passes, it helps you work out which club to pass, particularly when you come to fitting the self pass in. All you've got to do is pass the club you get, so if you get some lousy throw you just lob it to the next person to sort out :-)

Over the Shoulder

To do the over the shoulder look, A and B face C, who faces A and B. (D, E and F can take a rest).

A:-)    B:-)    (-:C

A passes to C and receives from B, via a shoulder pass. B passes over hir shoulder, to A, and receives from C. C passes to B and receives from A.

If D, E or F have rested enough, they can join on either end. To sort out who passes where: If there is someone behind you, pass over your shoulder, if not, pass to the nearest person facing you. Adding more people, turns this into the sort of pattern which is better discussed over a beer than actually juggled.

Again, this pattern can be juggled with any rhythm, but whenever Tarim says it can be done with alternates, people just groan at him and suggest we try a different pattern :-(

Moving Zig-Zags

1.    A   C   E               2.   A   C   E
       \   \   \                      /   /
        B   D   F                    B   D   F

The common or garden 3 person feed can be extended to any number of people in a zig-zag. The people at the ends (A and F) do every-other, the others feed the 2 people opposite. When A receives a club they can grab it, shout "out" and move to the other end of the pattern. B now does every-others with C, everyone else carries on as before. At the appropriate moment (Tarim leaves this bit as an exercise to the reader), A shouts "in" and starts doing every-others with F, F starts feeding E and A, so we have:

1.        C   E   A           2.      C   E   A
           \   \                     /   /   /
        B   D   F                   B   D   F

Next it's B's turn to move and C will do every-others and A will end up feeding. If you have an odd number of people then you join the opposite line when you go to the other end.

This pattern can be done with alternates. Assuming, somewhat rashly, you can switch from alternates to an alternate feed.

Passing Patterns / January 1995

Tarim / tarim@altern8.demon.co.uk

Passing Patterns, by Tarim / Juggling Information Service / help@juggling.org