On Sunday 20 October, the winner of the BNG Bank Circus Award 2019 was chosen during the special closing night of Festival Circolo in Tilburg. The acrobatic trio Knot on Hands impressed the jury with an impressive act and received a cheque for €5,000 from Harald Bergmann (Mayor of Middelburg and board member of BNG Bank Cultuurfonds). The prize will enable the company to develop the act into a full-length performance.
Knot on Hands consists of Britt Timmermans from the Netherlands, Tijs Bastiaens from Flanders, and Mario Kunzi from Germany. They trained at the CODARTS circus academy in Rotterdam, where their collaboration began. Read more about Knot on Hands.
‘Knot on Hands performs its own movements, in harmony, very naturally and with great calm. A very pleasant dynamic is created by incorporating repetition and stops. It is impressive that the three acrobats come across as very equal despite their different personalities. A technically very strong act with surprising acrobatic discoveries that has the potential to be developed into a full performance.’
The jury was very impressed with the development the group has undergone since graduating last June. It shows that the group is driven by ambition. With this award, the jury wants to support that ambition.
Earlier this year, the jury nominated three acts for the BNG Bank Circus Award. They were selected from all the graduation presentations by students at the two higher professional education circus programmes in the Netherlands. The nominees received a small grant to further develop their presentations during the summer months. The other nominees were:
The jury for the BNG Bank Circus Award 2019 consisted of:
The BNG Bank culture prizes were created to encourage and support up-and-coming talent in their further development. The BNG Bank Circus Award is awarded to the most distinctive talent graduating that year from one of the two higher professional education circus programmes in the Netherlands (Codarts Circus Rotterdam and the Fontys Academy for Circus and Performance Art in Tilburg). The prize is an initiative of Circomundo, the umbrella organisation for Dutch youth circuses.