Sean Gandini juggling: Royal Opera House plans intriguing crossover

As part of January’s London International Mime Festival, internationally acclaimed juggler Sean Gandini collaborates with the Royal Ballet in a new work. 4 x 4 Ephemeral Architectures is something the likes of which we can guarantee you have never seen before. Gandini’s brainchild, it brings together four jugglers, four ballet dancers, live music and atmospheric lighting in a mesmerising show that truly pushes the boundaries of the possible.

Long fascinated by mathematics and a keen student of the discipline, Gandini is big on patterns. Dance editor Teresa Guerreiro asked him how it all fits together.

Culture Whisper: Juggling; ballet; mathematics – where is the intersection point?

Sean Gandini: I think both ballet and juggling are essentially aesthetic mathematical structures, the obvious intersections are time and space, but there is a more complex and to me more interesting place, which is the place where one thing seeps into the other, the traces one geometry leaves on another.

CW: How easy or difficult was it for you as director to bring these different performers together to the point where their respective arts blend so seamlessly?

SG: I thought the mixing of these two arts would be worth it but laborious like mixing oil and water. What I found from the very first session was that actually our understanding of juggling is surprisingly compatible with classical ballet. I think we’re inventing a "classical juggling" for this piece. We worked quite a lot with the jugglers without the ballet dancers - it takes longer to make new material with the jugglers, and contrary to our initial expectations we have given the jugglers quite a lot of movement. Also I think the dancers’ co-ordination has been stretched. One of my favourite sections has the dancers’ arms tracking complex two ball patterns which are 20 beats long. The arm co-ordination is very complex, and then we layered with feet and ribs. I don’t think they ‘re used to working in such a complex manner. But they learn incredibly fast!

CW: Where do you go from here??
SG: So many places to go! We are lucky in that we always have a handful of projects on the go, but we want to do something very theatrical next, using scripted text. It has a working title of "Berlin Women." We also would love to keep exploring our love affair with Ballet!

Gandini Jugglers: 4 x 4 will show at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio from the 13 - 15 January 2015. Read our preview here.