Ring Juggling
Keeping rings up. In the far-future, super-evolved world that is French circus there's been a movement toward fragmentation of different skills, with each group of practitioners focusing in on their subgenre to try and discover and work with the essence of its technique, and of all the disciplines juggling has travelled furthest – to the point that some think it should be treated as a separate artform in its own right. Wherever you come down on that particular issue, there’s no doubt that juggling is today an extremely rich practice technically and artistically, with its own notation, many experiments on the absolute fringes of the discipline, and a slew of specialised festivals and conventions.
Magazine
At the start of Motet there are juggling balls of all sizes and colours lying on the stage, and it's very dark. Sakari Männistö, wearing voluminous, brocaded trousers, treads daintily among them, moving from one edge to another, staring out and not in, waiting for something perhaps.
For all that Jay Gilligan stands by the door and greets each audience member as they enter, Objectify isn't inviting work – it's uncaringly individualistic, highly and minutely developed, and intellectual in that way that is perhaps a little impatient with your ability to keep up.
Within the first ten minutes two audience members have been pulled up on stage—Tom, who’s busy peddling the bike that provides the theatre’s electricity, and Saga, nervous and clutching a handbag, who’s philosophically brutalised by the ringmasterish whiteface.