Born in Atlanta, GA in the United States, Bobby Cookson never would have imagined a circus life as his future. Bobby did almost all of the ”normal things”- baseball, football, boy scouts, taekwondo, music (voice, violin, mandolin, and guitar). He graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016 with a mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree. His circus journey began in his last year of high school where he found a circus program in the theatre department- it was there that he began cyr wheel, and the rest is history.
Bobby first performed on an international stage at age 18, and went on to become the 5-time US Cyr Wheel National Champion. Bobby then placed 5th at the IRV Cyr Wheel World Championships in 2013, and returned three years later to claim the bronze medal at the same World Championships in 2016. He graduated from the National Circus School of Montreal in 2020, specializing in cyr wheel and working with other disciplines such as juggling, aerial rope, banquine/partner acrobatics, ground acrobatics, and object manipulation because “you never know what discipline is going to be needed to create something”. After school, he became a co-founder of the collective ILO. He is always looking for ways to mix his two worlds of engineering and circus and is constantly trying new things to create the abstract worlds in his head. In his spare time, he likes to create imaginary friends from real life objects.
English (United States) 
French