HARVEY COBB WINNER OF THE BNG BANK CIRCUS AWARD 2022

On Sunday 30 October, the winner of the BNG Bank Circus Prize 2022 was chosen at the special closing performance of Festival Circolo in Tilburg. Despite sitting at home with corona, Harvey Cobb managed to convince the jury with his video presentation of his hilarious act ' Something about Pink'. A fellow nominee received a cheque for €5,000 for him from Harald Bergmann (mayor of Middelburg and board member of the BNG Culture Fund). 

England's Harvey Cobb graduated from Codarts Circus Arts in Rotterdam last June.

From the jury report:

With his comic timing and skills in object-manipulation, Harvey Cobb shows that he is a multi-talented circus performer. In Something About Pink, he takes you on a humorous journey that also looks stunning. Harvey is a performer at heart and really shows he is ready for the professional world.

FOUR NOMINEES

For the BNG Bank Circus Prize, the jury nominated four acts earlier this year. They were selected from the graduation presentations of students at the two HBO circus programmes in the Netherlands; Fontys Academy of Circus and Performance Art and Codarts Circus. The nominees received a small scholarship to further develop their presentations over the summer months. The other nominees were:

• Fenja Barteldres (Codarts) with her cyr wheel act 'Cyrrealism'
• Jef Kinds (Codarts) with his aerial straps act ' Osmium'
• Jonas Bolliger (Codarts) with his floor acrobatics act 'This'

 JURY
The jury for the BNG Bank Circus Prize 2022 consisted of:

• Mayke Heesels (artistic director Circus Zanzara)
• Carole van Ditzhuyzen (artistic coordinator Maaspodium Rotterdam)
• Felix Zech (acrobat and with Familiar Faces winner BNG Bank Circus Prize 2017)
• Marc Eysink Smeets (director/director Festival Circolo - board member Circuspunt)
• Harald Bergmann (board member BNK Bank Culture Fund)

BNG BANK CIRCUS AWARD

The BNG Bank culture awards were created to encourage and support up-and-coming talent in their further development. The BNG Culture Fund has four more prizes to encourage and support up-and-coming talent in their further development. These are the BNG Bank Theatre Prize, the BNG Bank Dance Prize, the BNG Bank Music Prize and the BNG Bank Literature Prize.

The BNG Bank Circus Prize is awarded to the most distinctive talent graduating that year from one of the two HBO circus programmes in the Netherlands (Codarts Circus Rotterdam and the Fontys Academy for Circus and Perfomance Art in Tilburg) The prize is an initiative of Circuspunt, the Dutch platform for the circus sector.
Previous winners of the BNG Bank Circus Prize: 2017 Familiar Faces (acrobatics), 2018 David Eisele (diabolo) 2019 Knot on Hands (acrobatics) 2021 Melody Nolan (handstands). In 2020, the final could not take place and the prize was divided among the four nominees.