Gandini Juggling and choreographer Alexander Whitley are set for an adventurous and kaleidoscopic cross art-form collaboration at artsdepot, as part of CircusFest, on 12 April. Gandini Juggling’s director Sean Gandini and choreographer Alexander Whitley have joined forces to create Spring, an eclectic enquiry into the nature of colour and how we perceive it. Spring will also tour to Pontio, Bangor; and Oxford Playhouse.
Spring challenges impressions of movement and physicality, embracing deconstructed rhythms and jubilant patterning – with signature Gandini flashes of humour. Featuring five virtuoso jugglers and four contemporary dancers, Spring takes their tangible and visceral art forms into new territories, and further establishes the relationships between them. It is the third and final part of Gandini Juggling’s trilogy of flirtations between juggling and elaborate dance languages, which began with 4×4 Ephemeral Architectures and Sigma.
Guy Hoare’s pop-art lighting opens the show, flooding the stage with the three primary colours of red, blue and yellow, before moving through black and white to 22 pastel shades in a kaleidoscopic celebration of the vibrancy of colour. Gabriel Prokofiev’s futuristic sound score for vintage synthesiser and live strings plays off the mathematical patterns of juggling, using the time signatures of 7/4 and 5/4 which are so often its rhythms.
Spring is co-produced with Cambridge Junction; LIMF; and Plateforme 2 pôles Cirque en Normandie / La Brèche à Cherbourg et le Cirque-Théâtre d’Elbeuf. Spring is supported by artsdepot; Arts Council England; Birmingham Hippodrome; CIRCa pôle National des Arts du Cirque Auch Gers Occitanie; Lighthouse Poole; and Theatre Op de Markt.
Gandini Juggling is a London-based contemporary circus company founded in 1992 by Sean Gandini and Kati Ylä-Hokkala. Works range from radical art and juggling fusions to accessible theatrical performances, from choreographic studies to commercially-commissioned routines. Since its inception Gandini Juggling has performed more than 5,000 shows in 50 countries.