Sports Juggling Versus Being Entertaining

For those who don't know; there is a disparity between the performance community and the "sports" community in the juggling world.  A friend of mine, "Hobbit" from Hvbris (Web Site For The Troupe ) once said that "Most audience members can't tell the difference between a three beat and a five beat weave".  Most people who sit and watch in an audience can't tell the difference between a technically complicated move and a less complicated move that looks similar.  I have spent five minutes working on a three minute three club act involving moves that would make a five club juggler gasp only to have the audience start clapping the moment a fourth club goes into the air.  I may not be able to tell you the reason why (or if I did it might offend some people....it could go either way) but laymen audience members have a harder time appreciating technical juggling.  But jugglers as a whole tend to judge each other based upon technique rather than upon showmanship.

This is most manifested within the juggling community.  ESPN within the last few years started showing casing World Championship Juggling, in which technique and accuracy are judged to be the most important aspects( I believe this event is part of the World Juggling Federation).  This trend has itself carried over to the juggling community as a whole (not the entertainer community) and a routine is often judged by how technical it is.    This in reinforced by the cirque nouveau in which music predominately is the narrator and mover of events within the show itself.  

This doesn't tend to be a problem at the level that you find on WJF or within the realms of Cirque D'Soleil but here at the level I exist at it does tend to be a problem.  A common occurrence might be a performer finding an amazing and complicated technical move and "using" the hell out of it for a show but in the process of doing so might end up boring the heck out of everyone else.  What a lot of performers do is to create a form of artificial difficulty where they find some way to make the act that they are doing more complicated by creating a challenge within it.  Things like adding in Rola Bola's, Balls for head/shoulder bounces, and Spinning Plates tend to be common.  Doing things like this creates a very dynamic show in which there seems to be a goal for the performer.  There are other performers who's routines allow them to never have a "dull" moment.   But we also have performances in you have repetitions of the same basic movement over and over with the occasional "difference" and a serious case of the jugglers mouth (a large o expression that we traditionally see with extreme focus and concentration). (juggling performans of sergio tapia - juggling convention melipilla 2013)  Watch the first minute and a half for an idea of what I mean.
Other things can help as well such dynamic movement of the objects knowing your material (drops happen but are generally speaking the mark of a bad performer when they keep happening.

Material needs to be created that engages the audience, the people who are not familiar with what you are doing.