Ambidextrous passing
These are some notes on Cameron’s BJC 2024 workshop on ambidextrous passing, an introduction to 4‑handed siteswap. Demonstrated with Brook who provided extra tips and originally collected some of these patterns in a blog post for the IJA, which has more detail. These notes recorded by Iain (all mistakes are his).
Cameron and Brook first gave an overview of 4‑handed siteswap. You could see Brook’s primer on passing.zone.
You don’t need to know the theory in these notes. All of the sequences of numbers (4‑handed siteswaps) are linked to the passist web-app which describes the pattern in words, tells you how to start it, and gives you a 3d animation.
For this whole session, decide who will be juggler A and juggler B in passist:
- Juggler A starts, and always throws straight single passes.
- Juggler B starts half a beat later, and half way through the pattern. They always throw crossing single passes.
The passes should be “floaty”, higher than the passes in 4‑count.
The workshop presented two parallel sequences of patterns, all for 5 clubs:
First try one of these:
The flips (siteswap 4) can just be held. If you do flip them, do them lower and snappier than passist shows. Flipping the clubs makes these patterns a lot harder.
Second try one of these:
Third try one of these:
Because these patterns have period 7, the same club is used as the pass (the 7 throw) every time. So make it a different colour, so you immediately see if you pass a different club, or do a self with the passing club.
Finally try: