Active Balance tricks

[HansNickmans]

I was pondering about the new 'hardest trick' there is with kendama, since lunars and stilts (and axes to a lesser extent?) have become so common. When I started out with kendama, these were the mythical kendama-tricks that you could only see in one or two videos... I actually thought for a while that I invented stilts (not that I could do it, but the concept of a bird in tama grip).

I think the recent 'active balance'-tricks have replaced lunars and stilts in that fashion. Some that come to mind are:
- boarder's balance: not so common yet, but you can see it popping up here and there (Turner Thorne for example)
- no hole stilt: seen done by KendAlex, Zack Yourd and Max Norcross (and probably more). Also beginning to pop up in more edits...
- naughty bird: outside of the original video and Rodney in KE mini-edit 9. I haven't seen it anymore. Probably because of the visual appeal?

This got me thinking, how many more 'harder' tricks are out there? Tricks we now consider to be impossible but will one day become 'mainstream'... Are there any more of these 'active balances' out there? How common are they at this point? Discuss :-)

note: I put hardest between quotation marks since consistency and combinations of these tricks are considerably harder. I'm just thinking of tricks in their purest form

[donald grant]

Yep, as things progress, tricks which were considered incredibly difficult become more and more popular.  Stilts and lunars have certainly become more "mainstream", but obviously still remain as tricky as they ever were....

Axe is a slightly tougher one, but give it time and I'm sure you'll be seeing it more and more.

As for "active balance" tricks, they're still rarely spotted.  If you want to try something *slightly* easier than boarder balance, you can always have a go at "crazy lighthouse": edge of the base cup is "caught" on the hole and balanced at a slight angle. 

[Kev]

If you want to try something *slightly* easier than boarder balance, you can always have a go at "crazy lighthouse": edge of the base cup is "caught" on the hole and balanced at a slight angle.

While practicing lighthouse today I saw the potential for this trick and wondered what it might be called. Crazy lighthouse! So now I know

[the milky oolong]

Ever landed a Lighthouse not quite centrally, and there's what seems sometimes like a half a second's worth of '...' before the base cup kind of 'clicks' into position? Maybe it's just me.

Thinking about active balance tricks, I suppose you've defined it quite well - you're not 'reaching' a balance position as with Lighthouse and Lunar (and even Stilts to some degree) so much as constantly 'maintaining' one when it comes to active. I've seen a few tricks like this on the net that have pretty much blown me away; spike-wise tama balances executed better than I can balance the tama on one finger with the spike, and obviously those Norcross 'Laquered Stilts' which are nothing short of maddeningly skilful.

I do think the case of 'transitional active balance' tricks (my God does that sound un-cool) has to be mentioned as well: I've watched Alex Ruisch switch from Lunar to Inverse Lunar while maintaining total contact, and I have seen someone (I think it might have been a very talented Swiss kendama player) pulling off Centrifugal Lighthouses (sounds like an early seventies prog band that never made it), similarly blowing the whole concept of rotation in kendama well out of the water. Something about these tricks especially captivates me in the way, as a quite unspectacular but obsessive juggler, watching Teku's endlessly inventive multi-ball contact juggling (www.juggling.tv) kind of tears the 'sport' a new paradigm, to be oddly vulgar about it.

I'm off to thread my kendama with an extra long string, throw the ken in the air, put one foot on the tama and climb out of sight into the desert sky.

[HansNickmans]

Funny you made the link to Teku, I really enjoy his stuff as well! He got me back into contact juggling a while back. However, I see those centrifugal tricks as another 'class of trick', something along the lines of 'contact kendama :-)'. Zack Yourd and Jeffrey van Reeven did some of these in their latest edits (five trick fix and the sunrise edits respectively...)

As for the active balances, I was thinking about some mad moves that came to mind while reading this post:
- no-hole & no-spike stilt? Just balancing on the rim of the cup.
- naughty stilt (or inverse naughty bird)? (I mentioned this one before in another post, but I haven't seen it done)

Those crazy lighthouse are fun though, gonna try and have a go at them tonight.

[SamB]

As for the active balances, I was thinking about some mad moves that came to mind while reading this post:
- no-hole & no-spike stilt? Just balancing on the rim of the cup.
- naughty stilt (or inverse naughty bird)? (I mentioned this one before in another post, but I haven't seen it done)

Turns out neither of those need to be "actively" balanced. I just tried then and your ken should sit in those positions quite happily, now swinging up to that position is something else entirely.
In Poland Toshi had a theory that you can spin the ken body (dead body style) on the ball, as far as I know it hasn't been managed yet but I think that would go into this class of tricks. (you can see him attempting it on the best trick video ~1:30) 

[The Void]

As for the active balances, I was thinking about some mad moves that came to mind while reading this post:
- no-hole & no-spike stilt? Just balancing on the rim of the cup.
- naughty stilt (or inverse naughty bird)? (I mentioned this one before in another post, but I haven't seen it done)

Turns out neither of those need to be "actively" balanced. I just tried then and your ken should sit in those positions quite happily, now swinging up to that position is something else entirely.

Hmm, not sure about that:
-No hole stilt is surely a dynamic/active balance, with the rim of the cup against the curve of the ball.
-No spike stilt should be possible as a passive balance... Although damn hard!
-Naughty stilt. This one feels different to me on different kendamas. I think a slight difference in the spike length can make this one vary in feel. It could be a "nearly landed Aeroplane", or else it would have to be active, I think. But I'm not 100% sure of what exactly this one is.

[HansNickmans]

I found some more 'active balances'
- spinning the ken on your finger (with the tama on the spike, saw it on gloken somewhere...)
- the candle balance which is sort of common
- putting the tama in the bird position and balancing the whole ken on one finger. Looks great and really challenging...
--> biggest difference here is that the balances are not tama on ken, but whole kendama on finger/hand/nose/...

[br4d24]

I was gonna say that trick where you balance the ken on the tama with the spike but it may have been covered. First saw it in the Japan edit and now its getting more common.

I personally think that the yoyo style/string tricks are going to be the next progression in tricks, considering the whole mixing of the scenes going on recently.

[Tetsuya Takahashi]

Are you talking about satelight? That move is super hard. I tried doing one..epic fail.

[SamB]

I guess we can add "tightrope" to this list now too (1:20)
[user]br4d24[/user] [user]Tetsuya Takahashi[/user] The spike on the tama trick is called "Borders Balance"[1] by the way.

1.	Does anyone have any idea why it is called that?

[BKA]

The spike on the tama trick is called "Borders Balance"

No it isn't, it's called Boarder's Balance.

[1] by the way.

1.	Does anyone have any idea why it is called that?

It was named by Takumi Okada, who sometimes used the online name of Boarder (as well as jugglertakumi). It's his balance.

[Dimensions]

It definitely isn't a hard trick
But I believe Munich tower should be in the list as well


[Edited for copyright infringement]

[Tetsuya Takahashi]

Oh. The people in sac call it satelight but boarders balance sounds better.

[NJKendama]

Does anyone have any tips for Boarder's Balance? Even if I put it on the tama, it stays for maybe 1-2 seconds before quickly sliding off. Thanks for the help!