a contemporary circus company and art project.
Cirque Bono was born in 2023 when Finnish circus artists Hilma Heinonen and Minna Tikkanen were lying on the bed in Hilma’s studio apartment and started brainstorming an idea for a collaborative project. By the end of that evening, the first draft of their piece, Make Orwell Great Again, was complete.
Later, Cirque Bono got its name from Hilma’s poodle, Bono. Poodles play a significant role in both artists’ lives, so it felt natural to honor them by including a poodle in Cirque Bono’s name and logo. Poodles, along with Bono himself, have also become a natural source of backstage humor and intermission entertainment during performances.
Initially, Cirque Bono was a practical platform for organizing gigs, teaching work, and invoicing. In 2024, Bono’s first performance, a street circus shot that combines circus, physical theater, and rap music Silakkalapset (The Herring Children), premiered in Turku, Finland, in the summer of 2024. It was performed at the pop-up festival and later participated in the Baltic Sea Day events in Salo.
Cirque Bono also performed and taught at the Phare Ponleu Selpak circus school in Cambodia and participated in the Turbul en Chap’ social circus festival in France. Additionally, they hosted workshops at the La Experimental Circus space in Barcelona.
Cirque Bono aims to perform, create contemporary circus works, and explore circus art. The creators are intrigued by what the circus can offer society, why it is made and watched, and the details that emerge within circus practice. Cirque Bono examines the questions that the contemporary circus often overlooks or avoids asking. It jumps to be a wolf in sheep’s clothes.
Cirque Bono crawls through fields, searches for balance in floating movement, peeks into the tent of a social circus, carries a cage to the city square, and creates a performance with no tricks at all. Cirque Bono strives to push the boundaries of contemporary circus and discover pathways to understanding what it truly means to be a circus artist. Or artist. Or human
Bono probari malo quam multis malis.
Ausonius