Photography by Ash
By DCist contributor Elena Goukassian
If you’re looking for some escape after the madness of the inauguration this weekend, a unique performance that combines juggling, dance, and live music at the Strathmore on Sunday may be just the ticket.
Spearheaded by London’s Gandini Juggling, 4×4: Ephemeral Architectures is a performance in which four jugglers and four ballet dancers share the stage, accompanied by local string ensemble Rogue Collective.
Sean Gandini, who co-founded the juggling company, co-directs the performance and is one of the jugglers, explains that the non-narrative program is told in vignettes. Yet if the show lacks dramatic structure, another order is at work: mathematical. The performance, Gandini says, “studies how structure generates patterns and beauty in art.”
Gandini and his wife, fellow juggler Kati Ylä-Hokkala, started the company in 1992, and ever since, they’ve been working with jugglers, dancers, and choreographers to create unique performances. Gandini remembers that they used to practice in a studio where a lot of dancers practiced, and that’s how they found many of their first collaborators. “We started to filter juggling through a dance lens,” he says.
Although they’ve always worked with dancers, 4×4 is their first time working specifically with ballet. In fact, the modern/contemporary dancers he was used to collaborating with rebelled against the traditions and structure of ballet.
But a chance encounter with an old friend who happened to be a ballet director led to their introduction to that more ordered world. Eventually, Royal Ballet dancer Ludovic Ondiviela came on board as choreographer, and the program began to take shape.
Photography by Ash
4×4 premiered at the 2015 London International Mime Festival at the Royal Opera House, to positive reviews. Now, Gandini and company are in the midst of a world tour, but the performance at Strathmore is unique. It’s the production’s only stop in the US, and it’s one of the few that features live music.
This Sunday, while the dancers and jugglers create magical shapes on stage, local string ensemble Rogue Collective will play a contemporary classical piece commissioned especially for 4×4. Gandini describes Israeli-French composer Nimrod Borenstein’s music as “exceedingly structural and polyrhythmic; it’s tonal music that creates a sense of nostalgia.”
Borenstein’s composition “Suspended opus 69” is “just a little outside the box of what we usually play,” says Alexa Cantalupo, violinist and founding member of Rogue Collective. “It’s very dense and lush; we’re all playing solos on top of each other.” She also notes that there’s a tango section with an extra beat, which Gandini and Cantalupo both see as an example of the playful humor in the music mimicking the movement on stage.
This isn’t the first time the group has performed with dancers. Cantalupo works as an accompanist for contemporary dance classes at the University of Maryland, and many Rogue Collective performances have a dance component.
Formed in 2014 by a group of University of Maryland students, Rogue Collective is “a quartet based on new music and collaboration,” says Cantalupo, with the goal of being “relatable and accessible to any modern audience.” That often means adding a visual component—video and/or dance.
Gandini Juggling and Rogue Collective have a lot in common, from their work with dancers to their drive to revive a neglected art form and bring it to new audiences. They also share a willingness to play unusual venues—like the street and people’s living rooms. When they part ways after this weekend, Rogue Collective will continue to perform around town. As for the jugglers, Gandini says they’re already working on two new pieces, one with contemporary dancers and the other incorporating juggling with classical Indian dance.
4×4: Ephemeral Architectures is at the Music Center at Strathmore this Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Buy tickets here. Rogue Collective has a number of upcoming performances: February 5 at 8 p.m. at Third Floor in Petworth; February 10 at 8 p.m. at Otherfeels in Mount Pleasant; and Feburary 18 at 8 p.m. at Haushouse in Brookland. Visit their website for ticket information.
