Circus Sarasota presents 'Red, White & Bello'
Bello Nock has performed with elite circuses all over the world. He ranks Circus Sarasota as one of the best big-top circuses around, along with Cirque du Soleil and New York Big Apple Circus.
So the man that Time magazine called "America's best clown" said he'll be among his peers performing with Circus Sarasota.
"It is a wonderful show," Nock said. "Circus Sarasota was founded by two world-traveled circus performers who got tired of traveling. Because of their past relationships, their histories, they're able to attract high-level people from all around the world."
The show is called "Red White & Bello," and it opens Friday for 24 performances through Feb. 28 under the big top at Nathan Benderson Park, behind the Mall at University Town Center in Sarasota.
Even though Bello is the titular star, he said the rest of the lineup is filled with performers of his caliber. Among them are the Pellegrini Brothers, an Italian hand-balancing act that has won the Golden Clown Award from the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo. It's the most prestigious award in the circus world. "In movies you win an Oscar," he said. "In the circus, you win a Clown." (Nock has also won a Golden Clown Award.)
Circus Sarasota co-founder and world-famous aerialist Dolly Jacobs is also on the program. She was one of nine artists honored in October by the National Endowment for the Arts with a National Heritage Fellowship award. She's the only circus performer who has ever won that award. Jacobs and her husband, Pedro Reis, started Circus Sarasota in 1997.
The shows doesn't include any jungle animal -- no lions or tigers or elephants -- but it does features a dog act (the Dominguez Poodle Review) and horse trainer Sylvia Zerbini and her Liberty Horses.
"She's highly regarded and travels around the world not only as a performer but as sort of a horse whisperer," Nock said.
Zermini's animals are called Liberty Horses because she doesn't use reins. You may have seen her works in "Cavalia," the Cirque du Soleil-inspired big top horse show that has traveled the country.
Among the other acts in the two-hour show in Annalise Nock, Bello's 19-year-old daughter who performs on the something called the Whirling Wheel of Wonder.
"Some people call it the Whirling Wheel of Death," Nock said. "We don't like to take it that far."
The wheel is sort of like a giant hamster wheel in the air. Annalise Nock is the only female circus performer in the world who is the principal performer in a whirling wheel act, and the only female who does a forward somersault in the wheel.
Soon she's attempting to set the world record for the most somersaults in one minute in the wheel, her father said.
As for Bello, who's known as much for his huge shock of hair that sticks straight up about 12 inches from the top of his head, he said he's a different kind of clown than what people are used to.
"I have always billed myself as a comic daredevil," he said.
One thing that makes him different, he says, is that he tries to occupy as much of the big top as he can, vertically and horizontally. So he'll be up in the air on a trapeze one minute, and in the audience area the next, and he becomes part of many of the other performers' acts.
Right around the same time that Time magazine called him "America's best clown," Nock said, the New York Times said he was perhaps the finest athlete who had ever set foot in Madison Square Garden.
"If you like clowns, I'm different," he said. "If you're scared of clowns, I'm different."
Details: Feb. 12-28, Big Top at Nathan Benderson Park, 5851 Nathan Benderson Circle, Sarasota. Show times: 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and Tuesday, Feb. 23; 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday and Monday, Feb. 15. Tickets: $15-$55. Information: 941-355-9805, circusarts.org.
Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919. Follow twitter.com/martinclear.
This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Circus Sarasota presents 'Red, White & Bello' ."