Assorted Manipulation

Deconstructed imagist poetry and abstract chaos in Gandini Juggling's tribute to the work of the fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

I was told beforehand that Kimmo Pohjonen once mooned the Queen, or some Royal, at a Proms performance in London. I don't know for sure, but I can credit it. With a low mowhawk, bare arms and a sweeping dress he's salty, earthy, tanned, strong; onstage he has a clear, unwavering confidence in whatever he happens to be doing, which could feasibly include mooning the Queen.

Two characters, a man and a woman, are undergoing a rehabilitative process, alone except for the ambient voice of a calm, insistent psychiatrist. The man remembers a terrible accident, and struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide; the woman's memory slides away whenever she comes close to its pivotal moment.

Different nations have different kinds of stage nudity, I think. Australian nakedness is blokey and exhibitionist, Scandinavian is black and white and full-frontal, Eastern European is durational and probably smeared in something, while the French variety is matter-of-fact, broad, comic, casual – family nudity.

Baguettes, coats, bags of onions, wicker hampers, a double-headed broom, a picture book, coffee cups and saucers, spoons, plastic funnels, cardboard boxes – everything can be juggled, everything will be juggled in Les Apostrophés' lengthy and exhaustively inventive Cabaret Désemboîté.

'I think the Pina Bausch thing ended up being stronger than we imagined—in my mind it was lightly inspired by Pina Bausch and it came out strong. I'd say it's only recently that her influence has come in. I'd say that maybe our early work was closer to our other hero, Merce Cunningham. Maybe NightClubs was a little bit more related to Merce's work and mathematics and complex space and all of that, and certainly all our early work was working with complex spatial arrangements. With Pina actually it's terrifying when you see her work because you just realise how much everyone's got out of it. Kontakthof and Café Müller are extraordinary and beautiful works. They hover at the back of your brain those pieces...'

Sideshow talks to Sean Gandini about Smashed!, the commission piece from Gandini Juggling's 2010 Watch This Space residency, and a work of beautiful destruction and perversity.