I’m Berkey, and I saw the dim lights of the north for the first time in 1998 as I was born in Sweden. There I ended up by some odd twist of path at the Circus Cirkör upper secondary circus school where I started climbing Chinese poles, a habit that I stuck to almost all the way through my educational period. Taking a detour through Denmark for a year, I ended up at Fontys Circus and Performance Art in Tilburg, where I graduated in 2023. By then, I had abandoned the singularity of the Chinese pole for a forest of nine poles that together shaped what was eventually called Structure #1. I won the BNG Bank Circus Prize shortly after. I had my first proper encounter with TENT during the presentation of Structure #1 at This is not a circus in late 2023.
I've been diving into my interest of rigging and construction, and where these interests can meet with circus and applied as an artistic practice. This is where my work currently continues, as I'm exploring the meeting between the human body of the performing artist and the steel of the structure. I explore how the two parts can be balanced: as a duet rather than 'circus artist and their apparatus'.
For the week with TENT, I am concentrating on refining and hopefully redefining the buildup and dismantling process. Assisted by Max Patchke, I am spending some quality time with the structure from a technical standpoint.
MAKER FOR
A WEEK
