Silvia Pavone

What are your taboos?

This spring I literally threw myself into a wonderfully mad journey of self discovery with the world-renowned Gandini Juggling.

If you don’t know them yet, the Gandini’s are a company of ridiculously talented object manipulators, whose work has been reinventing and reinvigorating juggling over the past 20 years, whilst challenging people’s perceptions of contemporary circus all over the world.

I joined them for a 5-day, French run of ‘Cløwns & Queens’, a beautifully brave and visceral show that comes with balls, plush penises, exchanges of bodily fluids and horizontal juggling.

‘Full of sex, but never sexy’, the show depicts a mad court full of queens and clowns, engaged in a ‘constantly shifting dance of desire’. With echoes of Stanley Kubrick, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini,’Cløwns & Queens’ explores the nature of lust and imbalanced power relationships in a brave cross over between circus, dance and performance art.

For me personally, this was an incredible opportunity to explore some of my own taboos, both as an individual and a performer. The risk of juggling on stage for the first time ever in my career, after only a few rehearsals with the company and the specific task of hula hooping without the shield of technical tricks were emotionally charged challenges that stripped me down to my most vulnerable… let alone the actual naked scene on the cold, white lit up tables.

The risk paid off. When life offers you the opportunity to manifest your feelings through work and by doing that, learn about yourself, that’s when the most exciting adventures are bound to happen.

Immense gratitude and big respect to Sean Gandini and Kati Ylä-Hokkala, Artistic Directors of Gandini Juggling, all the performers in the company and Le Maillon Theatre de Strasbourg , for adopting me onto this crazy journey.