Spring by Gandini Juggling arrived in Montreal midsummer (July 3-8) to be part of the Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival, filling up the large stage of TOHU with color and motion. Featuring nine performers, these juggling dancers and dancing jugglers, move around the stage, manipulating balls and clubs, interlocking their patterns and movements, and creating hypnotic shadows and flashes of color. Occasionally, one performer comes to the front to tell us something useful about the process—once, there is even a cheer about juggling and dance being perfect for each other, as if trying to dispel the odd couple myth behind their union.

Flashes of color from Gandini’s Spring jugglers. Photo courtesy of Dolly Brown Color plays a big role in this show, just as it does in the actual season of spring. Though the costumes are a drab gray, they allow your focus to switch from the artist to the art in the air– or the movement of the dance bodies rather than the characters within them. Notably, the cast is made up by a majority of women, and the brief interchanges between...