Gandini Juggling, Cascade, Somerset House Courtyard

Just when you thought juggling had reached its natural limits, Gandini Juggling come up with a brand new concept. They have juggled with apples, even while paying homage to the great choreographer Pina Bausch; dialogued with ballet, India’s bharatanatyam dance and contemporary dance. They juggled their way through Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten. They’ve made dancers juggle and jugglers dance.

And now Gandini Juggling are engaging with water. More precisely, they’ll be performing within the rhythmic rise and fall of the fountains in Somerset House’s courtyard.

Entitled Cascade, this original show involves juggling balls big and small, and is performed to rousing brass music played live by the French company Circa Tsuica.

Given Gandini Juggling co-founder Sean Gandini's unquenchable curiosity, we shouldn't perhaps be surprised. As he told Culture Whisper, 'There is something about how gravity plays with water which is in the same reality as juggling. We are reprogramming the Somerset House fountains for the first time in a decade. So, the puzzle is to find a cohesive whole between two dancers, 25 jugglers and 10 musicians, and the 55 water jets.'

As if this wasn't intriguing enough, 15 of the performers in Cascade are community (amateur) jugglers, as Gandini Juggling are very involved with educational work. 'We have been doing six weeks of educational workshops with the next generation', Sean Gandini told us.

Cascade sounds very much like one of this summer's 'musn't miss' shows. It's part of Circus Sampler, a two-weekend programme hosted by Somerset House that celebrates 250 years since Philip and Patty Astley pioneered circus in London.

All details of Circus Sampler here.