Gandini

Whilst still touring Smashed (2010), Gandini Juggling were commissioned to make a piece for the National Centre for Circus Arts in Cherbourg-Octeville in Northern France. Continuing their renewed interest in vigorous experimentation as a way to advance the possibilities of juggling, the company moved from the investigation of only visual sources to examining textual sources as well. In doing so, they specifically set out to examine ideas of translation, falsification, and imposture.

At the core of this investigation was the company’s response to myths surrounding Chinese circus performers and, in particular, to the Japanese film China Nights (1940). China Nights was a film that deliberately sought to ‘orientalise’ China in an attempt to justify Japanese expansion there at this time. In the film, the central character is played by Yoshiko Yamaguchi who, despite being of Japanese heri- tage, ‘passed’ as a Chinese actress (Li Xianglan). This prompted the company’s interest in encouraging their audiences to question what they initially assumed about the images they saw, and this led to the production of Chinoiseries (2012). This interest was most explicitly achieved through the performers’ multiple and repeated assertions of the patently false statement “Je suis une femme chinoise [I am a Chinese woman].”

This assertion by the performers becomes a significant motif of the work which, when combined with digital projections which repeat this phrase, alongside other statements of uncertain fact, shifts the focus from the choreographic role of juggling to its role in contributing to a specific meaning. Whilst the company had attempted similar approaches before, including as early as in Don’t Break My Balls (2000), these previous works had examined juggling’s potential to physicalise character relationships, rather than open up and embody specific philosophical concerns.


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


THE TEAM

Director: Sean Gandini
Lighting Designer: Andrew Grant
Projections: Howie Bailey
Performers: Nathalie Berthod, Iñaki Fernández Sastre, Sean Gandini, Kim Huynh, Antony Klemm, Owen Reynolds
Music by: Yao Li, Gustav Mahler, Bai Hong, Yuanlin Chen & Melody of China, Jah Wobble, Misora Hibari