GEORGE TOWN, Sept 25 — As one of the pioneers of contemporary juggling, Sean Gandini has come a long way from performing at London’s famous Covent Garden to now heading Gandini Juggling and travelling the world to perform a fusion of juggling, dance and theatrical shows.

Gandini, who is a performer, choreographer and artistic director in the company he founded together with his wife, Kati Ylä-Hokkala, picked up juggling as a child and this life-long fascination has continued till today.

Instead of sticking to contemporary juggling, he took it a step further to explore the richness of the art form when combined with dance and theatrical performances where it is not just skills but a presentation of a deeper, more meaningful art form.
Gandini Juggling was formed in 1991 and today, 30 productions later, the group has performed over 5,000 shows in 50 countries.

They were recently in Penang to perform one of their hits, Smashed, during the George Town Festival in August. The Gandinis are also currently touring other shows, Clowns & Queens, Director’s Cut, 4 X 4: Ephemeral Architectures and 8 Songs.

Here, Sean talks about his passion for juggling, the art of juggling and the surprise hit show, Smashed.

In his own words:

I grew up in Havana, Cuba… I used to do magic. I think magic is quite close to juggling and in magic, you hide your skills and I like the fact that in juggling you show it. I don’t come from a circus school, we come from a generation that’s self taught.

We do dance and some of us come from a dance background, Kati comes from rhythmic gymnastics, Kim comes from dance, Tedros comes from gymnastics. We actually have a ballet teacher in London who’s a Malaysian.

I used to do street shows in Covent Garden. I thought, my family is very artistic, they talk about literature and painting. I thought it would be nice if juggling had such richness and I wanted juggling to have something more. Then I met my wife and she had just stopped doing rhythmic gymnastics and we thought we’d just try.

It was a little bit difficult for a few years because we were doing things and people were puzzled, what is this strange thing. Now, it’s easier. Our first show was called, it has a difficult name, Neither, Either, Both, And, it was a reference to an American poet, E.E. Cummings, and it was quite an abstract piece with a lot of contemporary dance and a lot of patterns that we just repeat over and over.

We train almost every day, a few hours. I think most jugglers are a little bit addicted to juggling. So they like it. We’ve juggled all sorts of things from eggs and once, I had to do a film, I had to juggle a baby pig. I didn’t actually juggle it, I just place him from one hand to another.

I started this with my wife, Kati, we’ve been going since 1991. We’ve made 30 one-hour shows and we’ve made small things, big things, we like making things that start with juggling. In recent years, there are other art forms inside but juggling is what the company is about. We are based in London.

Originally, it’s about juggling and dance so we went to study a lot of dance and work with various choreographers and these days, we combine it. There’s a theatrical side as well. At the moment, we are working on a piece that has Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form. We are looking at how juggling can dialogue with other forms, but we are also very interested in pure juggling, it has many possibilities.

We don’t have a message, we want to give a series of images. I have an idea of what I think these images mean but I love the fact that it’s open. I think a good painting does that, that different people gets different things out of it. The show goes from very light things to very dark things. The end is quite a shock. When people watch, it’s quite nice and slowly, it turns dark.

There are thousands and thousands of ways to juggle. It’s a little bit like the keys of the piano, there’s as many juggling things as there are melodies you can play on a piano. There’s rhythms, there’s mathematical systems and if you combine it with dance, people can go different places, body throws, yes, it’s very rich.

At the moment, there’s this movement in juggling to invent new tricks. You can use systems and imagination. Some of the youngsters who are coming out in juggling now they are really rethinking the whole thing. You keep thinking the top has been reached and people keep moving it on. It’s really exciting, it’s really nice. It keeps growing and changing. It’s really good.