Gandini Juggling : Gandini Juggling Journal

31 October 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 22:06 • Comments (0)

29 October 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 • Comments (0)

28 October 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 09:04 • Comments (0)

13 October 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 • Comments (0)

05 October 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 09:58 • Comments (0)

01 October 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 21:08 • Comments (0)