Bello Nock
By: Jenn Steinhardt and Sienna Mae Heath
Bello Nock returns to the Big Apple Circus for its 32nd season Bello Is Back! Well-known for his daredevil stunts and child-like humor, Bello returns after an absence of ten years to his first American circus, where he became a star. Since that time, Bello has continued to strive for balance on and off the stage, as would befit someone who rides motorcycles on tight wires sixty-five feet above the heads of his audience, performs acrobatics atop steel sway poles at up to eighty feet in the air, and hangs on a trapeze from a helicopter flying over the Statue of Liberty. Walking a fine line between daredevil and clown, like wire walking, Bello has also achieved a perfect “yin yang” in his life with his family, performing, and business.
His chart-topping hair, balanced on end above his impish grin, and jaw-dropping stunts have won him great acclaim. TIME magazine crowned Bello “America’s Best Clown” (2008) to which he responds, “I believe the reason I could… receive an honor like that is because I set a new trend, I blazed a new trail. I don’t think I’m the funniest person out there. I don’t even think I’m the funniest clown.” Bello defines himself as fifty percent clown and fifty percent daredevil. “I call myself a comic daredevil,” he says. Achieving this balance in his performances has been a slow, but sure process since his stage debut at six years of age as Michael Darling in Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby. “Achieving the greatest of ease takes many hours if not years to make it look like the greatest of ease,” he says. “I wanted what I am at a very young age.” Bello had to train himself athletically as well. He elaborates by explaining that many people will try and do too much when they start training. The trick is start “slowly but surely, and then [increase] exponentially.” His techniques convinced the New York Daily News when the newspaper said that Bello “might be the greatest athlete to ever set foot in Madison Square Garden.”
With a background in the theatre and circus, he compares the two. In theatre, he says, the actor is “acting out someone else.” In the circus, it is “much more personal.” It is an “autobiographical performance, bringing people into your world. You’re their tour guide in your own house.” The circus has more freedom, so he “writes the rules as I go.”
Bello is excited to return to the Big Apple Circus and looks forward to “being able to make friends with every single audience member in a two-hour…journey.” He appreciates its intimacy and the new opportunities in store for him. Bello is particularly pleased to perform in the Big Apple Circus because it serves as a form of education and entertainment, which unites family members of all ages. He says, “No matter where you are in life, no matter what age group, it has something for you. It is the perfect blend of the chaotic art [of the] circus and very fine-tuned theatre.”
Bello also brings a parallel blend of talents and cultures to the Big Apple Circus. As the son of a Swiss circus performer and an Italian actress, the grandson of an opera singer, and the great grandson of a pianist, Bello has the arts running through his veins. He is full of surprises and sets clowning on edge, reinventing himself and entertaining audiences all over the world. He speaks five languages and has accumulated a variety of performing skills, which have come from his roots: his father and his mother come from seven generations of performers.
On his father’s side, the Nocks began the tradition of circus performance in Switzerland in 1772 and founded Circus Nock in 1840, which remains the oldest circus in the hands of the same family that founded it. Bello’s father came to America in 1954 and had four sons, of whom Bello is the youngest. On his mother’s side, the Cannestrelli family in Italy pursued theatre and music. Bello’s mother came to America in 1955, and she met his father in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Now, Bello is happily married to his high-school sweetheart, Jenny, a retired trapeze artist, whom (like his parents) he met in the circus. Their son and two daughters respect the family tradition of circus performing in different ways. “Each one of them has found their niche,” Bello says. Bello and Jenny’s son and older daughter work behind the scenes. Their daughter, 16, is Bello’s personal assistant. She makes costumes and organizes his schedule. Their younger daughter, 13, is quite the daredevil, in more ways than one. “She wants to try everything,” Bello says. Bello claims that a good performer needs four things: natural ability, a great coach, the drive to get back up and try again, and accessibility. “I had those, thank God. So does my daughter,” he says, “I’m looking forward to performing with her .”
As his children have grown older, his gravity-defying strawberry-blond hair has grown taller. He continues to wear his signature costume, a black tuxedo with a red bow tie, because when he was younger he heard this was the formal attire to treat an event with the utmost respect. Bello exclaims, “I have a deep-rooted respect for the circus!” He further explains that a doctor isn’t a doctor because he or she wears a stethoscope around the neck. A doctor is a doctor because he cares for his patients and is educated in the field. Similarly, a clown isn’t a clown because they put on a funny-looking outfit. “I was born a person who wants to make people laugh…I take it that seriously. There is a depth and a challenge,” he says. With a considerate and necessary amount of seriousness for his art, Bello also has a fresh, positive outlook with which he smiles in the face of a challenge and embraces the power of laughter. “Laughter is God’s good medicine,” he says. “It heals wounds and bridges gaps.”
In performance, Bello is able to achieve the greatest reaction by being mindful of his skills and the audience. He looks forward to bringing new expertise to his performances. “I don’t think anything is impossible,” he says. He is a skilled water skier and plays twelve instruments, so he may incorporate aspects of extreme sports (X Games) or music into his act. He says, “I want to bring back a perfect balance of what people expect of Bello with a few surprises.” Bello brings his optimistic belief in the potential of comedy to the developed, diverse, and warm atmosphere of the Big Apple Circus.
As to the audience, keeping up laughter in the crowd is a balancing act as well. “There is a certain amount of expectation [from] people,” he says. “It’s like getting a greatest hits record. You want a hit record that has about eight or ten of the greatest hit songs, but you always want two new ones to see what they’re working on. There’s no difference in performing. From show to show, [my performing] stays the same about eighty percent of the time and twenty percent of it is spontaneous and changes depending on the audience, whether they are a quiet audience, a loud audience, further away, whatever it is – that relationship is instantaneous during the performance.”
Bello believes that the perfect circus performer has to “be somewhat of a scientist, a daredevil, a performer, and an operation-minded person.” All these qualities give Bello his inventiveness, which has contributed to his success. His keeping the child alive in his heart but staying dedicated to his craft has earned him and his audience members the opportunity to experience the power of laughter. Bello likens himself to an “internal” case of Benjamin Button. The older he gets, the more child-like he becomes. “I enjoy life no matter where I am,” Bello says. Now he is ready to make the audience enjoy life under the Big Top of the Big Apple Circus’s 2009-2010 season of Bello is Back!
