Gandini

The unashamedly colourful and experimental Blotched marked the beginnings of Gandini Juggling’s return to a more explicit experimentalism in their work.

Although a commission for England’s National Theatre’s ‘Watch This Space’ festival, the ideas for Blotched were first tested during one of Sean Gandini’s teaching residencies at Bristol’s centre for circus and physical-theatre training, Circomedia. These ideas were sourced from a variety of influences and resulted in a work with two distinct aesthetics.

The first, a raucous and celebratory tribal atmosphere, came about through the company’s close collaboration with costume designer Gemma Banks and, in particular, through her interest in Phyllis Galembo’s photographs of contemporary African ritual costume, as well as through the company’s interest in the anarchic fashions of Bernhard Willhelm.

The second aesthetic was also driven by fashion design, in this case Sean Gandini’s interest in Alexander McQueen’s radical fashion designs and, in particular, McQueen’s ‘Dress No. 13’ from his ‘Spring/Summer Collection’ (1999). As part of the climax to McQueen’s collection show and in front of a live audience, a white dress worn by ex-dancer Shalom Harlow, who was rotating on a small revolve, was spray-painted by two robots.

Gandini Juggling were particularly interested in the way in which the resulting paint patterns on the dress were essentially traces of Harlow’s and the robots’ combined movement. Coupling this idea with some of the techniques of abstract-expressionist Jackson Pollock’s ‘action paintings’ led the company to explore the effect of using paint as a way to visualise, and almost record, different juggling patterns.

(orginal text from Juggling Trajectories, Gandini Juggling 1991 – 2015 by Thomas J M Wilson - link to shop)


THE TEAM

Director: Sean Gandini
Costume Designer: Gemma Banks
Music by: Kangding Ray Mark Fell, Elvis Presley, Gordon Watson (using a specially constructed musical instrument)
Performers: Iñaki Fernández Sastre, Sean Gandini, Frederike Gerstner, Doreen Großmann, Kim Huynh, Sakari Männistö, Owen Reynolds, Niels Siedel, Malte Steinmetz, Jon Udry, Kati Ylä-Hokkala