Bizarre Looking Swedish Troupe Cirkus Cirkör Lands at BAM for Limited Run
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) continues on with their year-long 150th birthday party by featuring the bizarre (and awesome) looking Cirkus Cirkör, a Swedish circus troupe arriving on our shores with the US premiere of Wear it like a crown - a tragicomic, and at times, absurd piece. These performers are interested in exploring chaos and "the transformation of risks into opportunities—taking our failures, fears, and shortcomings, polishing them up, and wearing them with pride, like a crown." Via BAM:
On a revolving stage, six performers move through a world of illusions, shadow play, knife throwing, acrobatics, and juggling, searching for one another and wrestling with their own individual dilemmas along the way.Wear it like a crown is the final part of Cirkus Cirkör’s trilogy utilizing the human body as its inspiration. The first part, 99% unkown, took its audience on a journey among cells and neurons; the second, Inside out, followed the heart. In Wear it like a crown, director Tilde Björfors tackles the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
“I am interested in the order inside, that which is uncontrolled and chaotic,” said Björfors. Upon hearing Karijord’s song for the first time Björfors said, “It was as though someone had set the issues that occupy me to music.” On her collaboration with the company, Karijord said, “I am attracted by the risk taking, the beauty and the darkness. In writing my music, these elements are central. [“Wear it like a crown”] is about not hiding your fear, about people meeting when they dare to show how vulnerable they are.”
Inspired by a desire to change the world, Artistic Director Tilde Björfors founded Cirkus Cirkör as an independent contemporary circus group in Stockholm, Sweden in 1995. Grounded in art and education—and with a propensity for thrilling action and daredevil humor—Cirkus Cirkör tours widely to critical acclaim throughout Europe and Asia, extending its reach through educational programs that impact 20,000 young people every year. In addition, the company’s internationally renowned program Cirkuspiloterna was Sweden’s first professional full-time course of study for circus artists.
Rebekka Karijord has composed music for a number of films, drama series, plays, and dance performances throughout the world. She has released three critically acclaimed albums in Europe, and in the fall of 2011 Karijord released her latest album The noble art of letting go in the US, which features the song “Wear it like a crown.”
You can attend the opening night party at BAM on June 1, and catch the limited run through June 3. Watch the video for Wear it like a crown below.
