Tai Kwun Circus Plays 2022

Circus Camp for Professionals

Tai Kwun Circus Plays 2022

Circus Playground

Ting-koo-ki Mad Skills Battle

Only Bones v1.0

Ho! Ho! Ho! Monkey King is Coming to Town

PLI

New Boom in Circus

Rock It! Unicycle

Lunchtime Circus Playground

LIFE Event No. 2

Circus Camp for Professionals

Date & Time

7 - 8 Dec, 2022 8pm - 10pm

Location

JC Cube

Price

$280

General

How does one achive to create a great juggling performance that is of high artistic quality as well as etnertaining? In addition to their skills and techniques, how can artists connect juggling with narration, choreography, and music, to create works that embody their uniqueness as performers?

Since 2019, “Tai Kwun Circus Plays” invited Sean Gandini and Kati Ylä-Hokkala, Co-Artistic Directors of the world’s leading juggling company Gandini Juggling, to conduct the “Circus Camp for Professionals” online. With professional and fun instruction from Sean and Kati, the 2-year workshops allowed local jugglers and choreographers to explore their relationship with choreography and dramaturgy, and how to transform their juggling into a theatrical performance.

Met with great acclaim, Tai Kwun is thrilled to invite Sean and Kati to return to Tai Kwun and meet the participants in person!

Focusing on Gandini Juggling’s recent work LIFE, a contemporary circus production that pays tribute to Merce Cunningham's choreography, this year’s workshop will look at Cunninham techniques with juggling. Together with Jennifer Goggans from Merce Cunningham Dance Company, participants will be having a fun and inspiring workshops and get to create works with other local professionals.

Date: 7 – 8.12.2022 (Wed to Thur)
Time: 8pm – 10pm
Venue: JC Cube, Tai Kwun
Price: HK$280 (ticket sales on 11.11.2022 at art-mate.net)
Target: Local jugglers, choreographers and dancers
Workshop instructors: Sean Gandini, Kati Ylä-Hokkala, Jennifer Goggans
“Circus Camp for Professionals” will be conducted in English.
   


About Gandini Juggling


Formed in 1992 by world-renowned jugglers Sean Gandini and Kati Ylä-Hokkala, Gandini Juggling continues to be at the vanguard of contemporary circus, reinventing and reinvigorating juggling for the 21st Century.

Gandini Juggling celebrates juggling in all its facets, exploring not just what juggling is, but what juggling can be. Currently an ever-evolving ensemble made up of a virtuosic core group of jugglers, they regularly expand to include up to 20 performers for specially commissioned events and performances. Ferociously prolific, they are constantly creating new works, which range from radical art/juggling fusions to accessible theatrical performances, from choreographic studies to commercially commissioned routines.

Their most celebrated piece Smashed, a show inspired by Pina Bausch premiered in 2010 and has toured around the world since then. They have recently premiered LIFE, a piece inspired by American choreographer Merce Cunningham. The company was a central part of the Metropolitan Opera House’s production of Akhnaten, which features 10 jugglers meticulously choreographed to Philip Glass’s enigmatic score. Gandini Juggling's journeys have always been counter current, an individual voice in the global circus scene, with quotidian risk-taking and fearless upturns.

www.gandinijuggling.com


Biography

Sean Gandini
Kati Ylä-Hokkala

Sean Gandini is one of the pioneers of contemporary juggling. Working as a performer, choreographer and director, he has, for over 25 years, pushed the boundaries of juggling as a discipline and as an art form.

Growing up in Havana, Cuba, Sean was fascinated by magic and mathematics. At the age of 16, he began juggling, prompting a life-long fascination with all aspects of the art form. Sean’s professional career began in the 1980s, where he regularly performed in London and toured with various theatre companies – including the pioneering Ra-Ra Zoo. In 1991, with Kati Ylä-Hokkala, he co-founded Gandini Juggling. Together they have been at the forefront of experiments into what juggling is and what juggling can be.

Sean has created diverse array of shows, including the playful Sweet Life, the fiendishly complex celebration of the London Olympics Twenty/Twenty, and their smash hit, the darkly humorous and theatrical homage to Pina Bausch Smashed. The latest work of the Company is LIFE, a work inspired by Merce Cunningham’s works and with the support of Cunningham Trust.

Kati Ylä-Hokkala is one of her generation’s iconic jugglers. As the co-founder of Gandini Juggling, she has built a reputation not only as a highly-skilled technical juggler, but is also renowned as one of the leading innovators in dance-juggling.

Kati’s professional career began in the 1990’s, when she performed with the influential Ra-Ra Zoo. In 1991, with Sean, she co-founded Gandini Juggling. Since then she has been instrumental in the company’s experiments into the possibilities of juggling, including working to create unique “two-person sharing” juggling patterns.

A former rhythmic gymnast, Kati’s distinctive ability to combine movement with extremely complex coordination is second-to-none. In this she has crafted an intimate and extensive knowledge of the relationship between dance and juggling. Kati has performed in all of Gandini Juggling’s works since 1991, encompassing over 2,500 shows around the world.