BAM presents Sweden's CIRKUS CIRKOR

In 2013, after reading about the mass drowning of Eritrean and Somali migrants off the coast of Lampedusa, Tilde Björfors, artistic director of acclaimed Swedish contemporary circus company Cirkus Cirkör (Wear it like a crown, 2012 Winter/Spring; Inside Out, 2009 Next Wave) was inspired to create a new body of work on the topic of borders.

In 2015 she became more personally involved in establishing a transitional housing facility and opened her own home to boundary-crossers. Her personal and creative experiences permeate the engrossing and topical Limits, in which five world-class circus artists catapult and tumble through an imaginatively rendered ocean-, land-, and cityscape, struggling to connect across the walls, fences, and other obstacles that spring up between them.

The live score is by frequent collaborator Samuel "LoopTok" Andersson. In Limits what is possible-such as soaring over boundaries that separate-must be balanced against an individual artist's (and the overall group's) limits for physical pain and risk. As such, the work serves both as high flying spectacle and trenchant acrobatic exploration of an EU and world in flux.

Conceived and directed by Björfors, Limits features young teeterboard artists Anton Graaf and Einar Kling-Odencrants (recipients of the gold medal at the prestigious Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris), contortionist Manda Rydman, and hand-to-hand acrobat and juggler Peter Åberg and his aerial acrobatic partner, Saara Ahola. The production won a 2016 Swedish Theater Critics Association Award, as well as Expressen's Theater Prize, the first time the honor has been awarded to contemporary circus. See trailer at BAM.org/Limits

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