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No clowning, it's serious

Early edition

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published December 12, 2006

TAMPA – The daredevil clown Bello Nock wakes at 7 to the sound of his alarm clock playing the William Tell overture .

He dresses in a button-down Polo shirt that’s pink on one side and blue on the other, makes himself a banana-pineapple smoothie, and takes the garbage to the curb.

Then he gets in the car and drives from his Sarasota home to the State Fairgrounds in Tampa, where the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus   is preparing to start its 137th tour next month.

It’s Nock’s sixth year with the circus, and he has ascended to a kind of superstar status. Ringling has three touring shows. Bello’s tour, “Bellobration,” is the only one named after a performer.

Bello Nock is not his real name. It’s Demetrious Alexandro Claudio Amadeus Bello Nock. His family has been in the circus for seven generations, and he has been performing since he was six.

There are calluses on his hands that would turn away a blade. His strawberry-blonde hair stands like a high-rise office tower on his head. It doesn’t move. He uses a lot of hair spray.

While he’s driving, he talks on his Blackberry to his lawyer and his agent. He doesn’t like to waste time.

When Nock arrives at the fairgrounds, everything is happening at once. The whine of power tools echoes in the Expo Hall. Behind a set of bleachers, women are doing a fan dance. Pieces of circus equipment are everywhere: ramps for the stunt bikers, a giant metal hamster-wheel for Nock.

Ringling makes its winter home in the region, and the curtain rises on “Bellobration” here next month.

Tuesday’s practice wasn’t a full rehearsal, but a walk-through to test how well the performers know their marks and how quickly props can be moved in and out of the ring.
Among the other performers, Nock is intent, focused.

“It’s serious business, this clowning,” he says. “I’ve done stuff like riding a motorcycle on a high wire ... You can’t think about what’s for dinner.”

Like his father before him, Nock designs a lot of his own equipment.

For this show, he dreamed up two hamster-balls on wheels at opposite ends of a metal bar. The show’s machinist helped him build it.

The walk-through begins. Right away there are problems: The performers are having trouble getting the ramps off the stage.

This kind of pre-opening glitch is normal. Nock has seen it a million times.

He has anxiety dreams: that he misses his cues, that he’s late for a performance. But somehow things always come together when the show goes on.

People say the circus is a dying art form. Not so, says Nock. It’s just changing into a modern megacircus with hundreds of performers.

“It’s the equivalent of the little hardware store and the grand Wal-Marts or Home Depots,” Nock says. “Things change. Things have to change. TVs aren’t black and white anymore.”

His Blackberry rings. “Just a second,” Nock says.

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at (813) 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 12, 2006, 21:34:31]