Warning: If your teacher is helping you to make sure your feet are in just the right position, your bow is at just the correct angle, and your neck remains in an upright and locked position, read this article at your own risk. For everyone else, dive into the art of flash fiddle, that age-old practice of taking what is musically correct and then going crazy. Let’s face it, when you’re already playing your solo as loud and as fast as you can, you never know when you might feel the need to, well, bust a move.

Players from all walks of life and musical styles, from all over the world, have been tempted by the wild side of fiddle playing.

In the world of classical violin, all roads lead to Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840). While his finger-bending technical innovations have terrorized young virtuosos for nearly two centuries, the mad Italian sure knew how to work a stage. From the moment he shuffled in looking like an insane-asylum escapee to the moment he unleashed three-octave runs on his G-string, he held his audience in the palm of his freakishly flexible hands.

We know a few of his tricks.

He often took the other strings off and tuned the G up to a Bb for a more brilliant sound. Paganini also liked to get his audience in the mood by imitating barnyard animals with his fiddle. One night in Ferrara, when Pag encountered a particularly rude crowd, he concluded his recital with an imitation of a donkey braying. The audience responded by threatening to tear him and his assistants to pieces. He was later escorted out of town by the police.

While the world of classical violin quickly moved away from such showmanship and toward the solemn rows of orchestra players we enjoy today, some country fiddlers have continued to go for it. Players like Texas legend Alexander “Eck” Robertson (1886–1975) developed a whole bag of stage tricks, from playing behind his back to playing on his back to tossing the bow (or fiddle) in to the air without missing a beat.

If you slide the fiddle down so the tailpiece is resting on your upper arm, the only trick to playing behind your back lies in swinging the tip of the bow behind your arched waist without impaling a kidney. The same care should be taken while attempting to bow through your legs from behind your back, à la fiddler Ricky Boen.

Likewise, to play while lying down, the biggest challenge is holding the instrument, lying down, and then standing back up again—without looking like a double-jointed camel. Strangely enough, tossing the bow has been a temptation across stylistic borders.

Even sensei Shinichi Suzuki, the father of the Suzuki method, was known to demonstrate the weight of the frog for a big tone during master classes by flipping the bow through the air from tip to frog and catching it without looking.