What is a Fushigi Magic Gravity Ball?

The Fushigi magic gravity ball, or “contact ball” as it is most often called, was originally a transparent ball made of a very hard plastic such as acrylic or polycarbonate. While lighter than crystal balls, they can still break toes, laptops and expensive furniture.

Recently appearing on the American contact juggling scene, the Fushigi brand contact ball has sparked mixed reactions among contact artists who have been developing the various branches of this discipline for over 20 years. This is largely due to the allegedly unethical marketing practices of the Fushigi company, who seemed to claim that they had invented contact juggling and warned new customers to beware of imitators selling “counterfeit” Fushigi balls.

Since the Fushigi commercial first aired, there have been many questions about how these balls work, and how they manage to defy gravity and float in mid-air. It is important to state here and now that there is no gimmick or magic trick involved, as the artists who have dedicated decades of effort to perfecting their skills can readily attest. The word “Fushigi” itself is Japanese for “magic” or “mysterious”, and it is true that magicians have worked to create the illusion of a floating ball since time immemorial. You can easily find more information on such tricks by doing an internet search for “Magic Zombie Ball”.

However, in 1985, performance artist Michael Moschen combined the worlds of illusion and ball manipulation in his “Light” routine, stunning the world with his breathtaking crystal balls that seemed to float between his hands and over his arms. His work reached even greater masses through the character of the Goblin King in the film “Labyrinth”.

Many of the tricks proposed by the Fushigi company were actually invented by others under different names; for example, the “Enigma” is a shortened form of “Edson’s Enigma”,  named after its creator Owen Edson.

Similarly, the “Levitation” hand trick is one variation of the isolations which are one of the most mesmerizing aspects of traditional contact juggling. These tricks include any maneuver that involves the ball remaining still while the rest of your body moves around it. You can see some of the best isolation work to date in the following extract from the “In Isolation” DVD:

The “Prayer Cross”, as the Fushigi people call their trick, seems to be the “butterfly” move which is the starting place for many contact jugglers. However, they seem to have taken their trick’s name from the “prayer”, which is an entirely different move.

Since Fushigi’s initial release of their ball, they have stopped selling the transparent balls and now only offer balls with a chrome core. This will probably disappoint many new customers, as the floating illusion will be much less striking than what they have seen on TV.

I can only imagine that the Fushigi staff made this decision for safety reasons: when exposed to direct sunlight, clear acrylic balls act like magnifying glasses and can cause fires, burn your hands and damage your eyes. I myself have had to take my acrylic ball away from small children who just wanted to touch it, but didn’t understand how they could be burned by simply holding it.

According to one member of the contactjuggling.org forum, there are two defects with the new design. The first is that the inner chrome ball has a sink line all the way around it and tends to throw off the illusion of isolation. However, this apparently also makes the ball look as though it were liquid. The other defect is that there is a bit of ribbing on the acrylic; three of these lines are only visible at certain angles, but you have to look closely to see them.

So will the “Fushigi” craze merely be a short-lived fad, reducing the public image of contact jugglers to “users of a magic trick ball”? Or will the contact juggling community gain even more respect after the difficulty of learning this fascinating art form is understood first-hand by a much larger audience?

I suppose that in the end, it is up to the artists themselves to educate the public on this breath-taking sport which, although it looks like magic, is all that and infinitely more.