Gandini Juggling : Gandini Juggling Journal

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The relative value of art

Owen Reynolds, Tom Johnson, Chris Patfield, Inaki Fernandez Sastre, Jon Udry, Sean Gandini, Kati Yla-Hokkala performing Tom's three notes for three jugglers.
I have often thought that the appreciation of performance is completely intertwined in the context it is performed in. We recently had the pleasure of performing a work in progress version of two of Tom Johnson's pieces. In the context of a contemporary classical concert our showing felt light hearted and frivolous, in the context of a friendly juggling showing it felt serious and rigid...

This summer more finalised versions of these pieces will be premiered officially. Tom has been extremely generous over the years with sharing his music and we are very exited that he is getting interested in juggling as music. Indeed i think he lectured in Luke Wilson and Jay Gilligan's music and juggling course in Stockolm.

On a separate note, someone noted that although they appreciated our version of Steve Reich's clapping music they felt that it was more a visual illustration than a piece of music. I see their point.
Tom Johnson and performers.jpg

The Post Quartet, Tim Parkinson, Michael Parsons and the Gandinis.

Posted By Sean Gandini At 11:09 PM • Comments (0)

Friday, February 12, 2010

Disparate thoughts and a Poem

Following from Inaki's post about large numbers, the BBC broadcast a wonderful documentary on Infinity which ironically includes spends some time discussing the ¨large¨ numbers, Google, Googleplex and Graham's number. Vertigo inducing indeed.

On a different note I recently discovered that Charlie Parker died whilst watching a Juggler on TV. I wonder whom? Below is a Jack Kerouac Poem that mentions this.

Charlie Parker looked like Buddha

Charlie Parker, who recently died
Laughing at a juggler on the TV
After weeks of strain and sickness,
Was called the Perfect Musician.
And his expression on his face
Was as calm, beautiful, and profound
As the image of the Buddha
Represented in the East, the lidded eyes
The expression that says "All Is Well"
This was what Charlie Parker
Said when he played, All is Well.
You had the feeling of early-in-the-morning
Like a hermit's joy, or
Like the perfect cry of some wild gang
At a jam session,
"Wail, Wop"
Charlie burst his lungs to reach the speed
Of what the speedsters wanted
And what they wanted
Was his eternal Slowdown.

Posted By Sean Gandini At 11:27 AM • Comments (0)

Friday, January 29, 2010

Jugglers who give me vertigo

We all know that a lot of jugglers have a soft spot for mathematics (or is it the other way round?).

That's why I wasn't surprised, when reading an entry blog (in Spanish) about big numbers, to find out that two of the three numbers they mention were introduced by mathematician-jugglers.

This kind of numbers are so overwhelmingly big that thinking about them can give you mathematical vertigo.

The first one is Shannon number which is an estimate of the number of chess games possible. Claude Shannon was an amateur juggler and he is known for having built the first juggling robot and proving the first juggling-related theorems.

The other number is Graham's number, a number calculated in 64 steps where each step grows much bigger than the previous and where the first step alone has more digits than the number of particles in the Universe!
It is named after Ronald Graham, mathematician, trampolinist, juggler and past president of the IJA.

Posted By Iñaki At 10:59 AM • Comments (0)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The audience is the show

We have just returned home from the fascinating city of Valencia where we performed for the ¨Fallas¨ We opened and closed the Gala show which led into the inauguration of this years Queen. I wonder if we will ever perform for such an ornately attired audience again.
Posted By Sean Gandini At 12:20 PM • Comments (0)

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The joys of the circus

Sometimes life delivers images as ready made archetypes. I grew up in Havana. My circus education came via visits from the Moscow state with my parents. As a child this world was enchanting and wondrous. A world i longed to belong too.

We have just returned from doing a filmed gala for Liana Orfeis Golden Circus in Rome. In the haze of jet lag i was transported back into this childhood world, North Korean flying trapeze that performed a quadruple, Nervous Kozack Horse riders exuding filmic machoness, Echoes of Fellini's clowns, Ringling brothers veterans, chain smoking ringboys...envelopes of cash, the Russian language filtered through thin dressing room walls...a world from another time, before Soleil and new variety. Marvelous.
Images to satisfy the child inside.

Liana Orfei's Golden Circus.

Posted By Sean Gandini At 9:44 PM • Comments (1)

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Juggling Journeys

What a strange journey this month has been. Duets shows in France.
http://aphotolifeart.blogspot.com/2009/11/14-11-2009-cie-gandini-juggling-stop.html
http://arteos.blogspot.com/2009/11/091114-cie-gandini-juggling-stop.html

8 Person commissioned ball show, echoes of the wondrous symmetries of Islamic art. On one day we met audience members from Uganda, Yemen, Panama and Saudi Arabia.

Then off to first ever and perhaps last ever Pirate Juggling shows in Sharjah.

kati pirate.jpg

Photos by Bartlomiej Wojcinski commissioned by Saltinbanco Italiano. http://www.bwojcinski.com.

Posted By Sean Gandini At 1:01 PM • Comments (0)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

So many patterns so little time

4 days spent in small spaces with 8 jugglers and 24 big red balls. So many new patterns! Group Juggling is marvelously embryonic. So much yet to do. I can see it keeping us busy for the foreseeable future.
We had fun thinking of each juggler as one hand...3 handed synch patterns, spacial translations of club passing patterns, valium basketballs, cartoon inuendoes, and the volume of space occupied by the juggling objects almost as big as the space occupied by the jugglers themselves.

Photo by Aline Angeli

Posted By Sean Gandini At 10:56 PM • Comments (1)

Monday, November 16, 2009

Dropping

When i was in my twenties i could easily loose a nights sleep over a little drop in a routine. I thought i had lost this obsessiveness, but recently discovered, it is still there, the sensation and aluminum bitter taste of a drop, following one like a shadowy demon.

For those of us that practice regularly Juggling is addiction. Mostly it has the magical property of alleviating the darker sides of the soul. It is an absurd ritual, and yet as someone who has tasted more dangerous addictions, it is a healthy addiction, it keeps us off the streets.

If one is lucky the dropping poison only lasts a few days, and one returns to the happy insouciance of a juggler's life.

Photo by Aline Angeli

Posted By Sean Gandini At 11:56 PM • Comments (0)

Friday, November 13, 2009

100 Years of Great Press Photographs

This nice shot of Fleur Laverack and Jem Hulbert (from the Fairly Famous Family) was taken in 1992 by Denis Thorpe, photojournalist who worked for The Guardian for 22 years. The Guardian has included this picture in its recent series "100 years of great press photographs." You can view it online here.
Posted By Iñaki At 12:21 PM • Comments (0)

Saturday, October 31, 2009

A small season of Maximalism.

Maximalist juggling autumn 2009 from Gandini Juggling on Vimeo. We had a quiet month in London this year. A time for reflection and training. Daily gym sessions Inside every juggler inevitably there is the yearning to add more...la folie des grandeurs... Echoes of the chen Brothers, where are the Chen Brothers now? High selves, synchronous selves autumn leaves...time to get creative again.
Posted By Sean Gandini At 10:06 PM • Comments (0)

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Clapping Music Update

For those interested in the piece, if you happen to be in London over the weekend, you can hear it live at the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday. This is an evening dedicated to Steve Reich including some of his best works. The composer himself will be playing alongside the London Sinfonietta in a rendition of his seminal piece Music for 18 Musicians.
Posted By Iñaki At 11:08 AM • Comments (0)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Clapping Music

This video has just hit 100 000 views. It's fascinating that the video has more hits than any of our other videos. Indeed it is perhaps a depressing thought that the video has more hits than the magnificent original!

The video was filmed during a 3 weeks residency in Berlin for the Roncalli Wintercircus. We had a lot of backstage time we started playing with bouncing the basic Clapping Music rhythm. Progressively all the jugglers learned it, and every night before our routine 2 of us would have a go with a small camcorder. After a couple of weeks of trying 2 jugglers finally got it, but we thought it unfair since there where 6 of us to post just 2. So we tried to film the whole thing with all 6 jugglers. We filmed it 4 times and the fourth one is the one on you-tube.

The piece is an accurate rendition of Steve Reich's score. The twelve note phrase is shifted against itself 12 times until its is back in unison. We decided to do all 12 repetitions of each bar.

I like its non juggling structure. The fact that the structure of the piece is non climactic (although one could interpret the end unison as a climax)...

Juggling's complex interaction with music and indeed juggling's ability to produce sound are aspects of juggling performance which i feel still have a lot to yield.... Obviously there is the rhythmic thump of the object hitting the hand. But what of the xenakian interpretation of each parabolic arc as it slices space....

Posted By Sean Gandini At 9:04 AM • Comments (0)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Juggling in the Visual Arts II

"Le Jongleur", part of a series of pictures dedicated to Circus by french photographer Sarah Moon. The pictures were taken on set during the filming of a short film also called Circus by the same author.
Posted By Iñaki At 10:28 AM • Comments (0)

Monday, October 05, 2009

Juggling in the Visual Arts

"La Jongleuse" by belgian surrealist poet, philosopher and photographer Paul Nougé. This picture is part of a series of 19 photographs taken by Nougé during 1929 and 1930 which were published after his death with the title "Subversion des images".
Posted By Iñaki At 9:58 AM • Comments (0)

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Events

I was watching Mondays with Merce on the Cunningham web page.We did a series of juggling convention events inspired by the sense of event/space that Cunningham pioneered.
Below is a picture from Grenoble 96 events which i remember with fondness. I always liked the idea of doing shows in the gym as opposed to on stage, i like what it does to the expectations and the humanising process. In the picture are Dancer Juggler Ben Craft and Alix Wilding and Simon Milius from Feeding the Fish.

Treating juggling as a choreographable substance is a always a battle ground between its intrinsic tendency towards maximalism (look what i can do ma) and the desire to mould it in spacial-temporal terms. I believe juggling suffers
from this more than music and dance and is one of the reasons the aesthetic approach has been difficult.

Juggler's nostalgia old props not juggled in a long time...coloured Dube stage balls....I can almost feel them in my hand.

Posted By Sean Gandini At 9:08 PM • Comments (0)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Notational Madness

We are fortunate in the juggling world to have so much elegant software at our disposal. A few years ago i saw Forsyth's elaborate "One flat thing, reproduced" amd wondered how it was made, notated understood. I stumbled upon this extraordinary project here, which explains the piece, the notation and more. http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu I am very jelous! We want a juggling one!
Posted By Sean Gandini At 1:32 AM • Comments (0)

Monday, September 07, 2009

Saturday London Parks

On Saturday we performed at a famous Playwright's party. An event we participate in bi-annually. The good and the great of the London intelligentsia attend. A tranquil park, marvelous food and educated conversation. So it got me pondering what makes these people successful, the line between recognition and obscurity is frightfully small...for every successful writer surely there must be a writer of similar talent lying undiscovered...

I'm my younger years i believed that people eventually get justly remunerated for their talent and sincerity. I no longer adhere to such beliefs.

From Samuel Becket:

* All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

* Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.

On a lighter note 2 new Juggling Videos from the Nightclub event at Watch This Space.

Night Clubs from Gandini Juggling on Vimeo.

It will be interesting to see if the title on this one gets bigger hits than the others!

Big Balls from Gandini Juggling on Vimeo.

Posted By Sean Gandini At 10:25 PM • Comments (0)

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Turing Apology

Messages from another world

Hyperboloids of wondrous Light
Rolling for aye through Space and Time
Harbour those Waves which somehow Might
Play out God's holy pantomime.

Alan Turing on a postcard sent in 1954

So much of the theoretical work on juggling patterns was done by people from the world of mathematics and logic. Which is why the following i thought would be of interest. The treatment of Alan Turing by the British government was shamefull: Turing Petition

For more about Alan Turing Petition

Posted By Sean Gandini At 12:13 AM • Comments (0)

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Juggler in Paradise

At this time of the year London is fantastic for Classical Music aficionados. Every night of the summer there is a Prom concert to attend to. The program for this one caught my attention:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2009/whatson/0909.shtml

The second piece, by American composer Augusta Read Thomas, is subtitled "Juggler in Paradise".

Robert Maycock says about the piece:

"And the work's subtitle? It's a metaphor for the way solo and orchestra relate, a continuous rhapsodic cadenza set against 'paradisiacal constellations'. It's physical, too: in Thomas's music dance is always close by. When the violin starts to speed up, the score suggests playing 'as if "juggling" the notes, rhythms, articulations'; and further on, 'like several objects in motion, in the air'."

The composer must have a real interest in Juggling as one of her other works is called "Juggler of the day".

Posted By Iñaki At 10:40 PM • Comments (0)

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Photos from Night Clubs at the National Theatre London

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Posted By Sean Gandini At 8:47 PM •