Clown’s return heightens appeal of Big Apple Circus
- Boston Globe
- Terry Byrne
- 05 Apr 2010
The one-two punch of clowns Grandma and Bello make this year’s installment of the Big Apple Circus an entertaining knockout.
After a nine-year absence, in which he spent time with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, the big-haired Bello Nock returns to the Big Apple, and in the close quarters of the single ring, his antics and daredevil skills are even more impressive. His innocent approach also perfectly complements the beloved Grandma’s “experience.’’
This year marks the circus’s 25th visit to Boston, and the production, called “Bello Is Back!’’ seems more relaxed than other years. There’s no pressure to fit all the acts into one particular theme and there’s a sense of enjoyment among all the performers. Even the ring crew gets to take a bow, since setting up the net for the aerialists becomes part of the act.
But just because the action flows easily doesn’t mean the audience can sit back and relax. Performers drop from the top of the tent, plates fly out over the audience, horses prance inches from the crowd, and trapeze artists tumble dangerously through the air. The show opens with Bello clambering up to a high platform and then “falling’’ off, bouncing back up with the help of bungee cords. The feat produces a gasp and then a giggle, that perfect combination of sounds at a circus.
Bello steals the show with his Wheel of Wonder, two large, rotating wheels that my son described as giant hamster wheels. Bello and David Martins somersault, jump rope, and otherwise defy gravity both inside the wheels and, gulp, outside as the wheels turn.
Other highlights of this year’s extravaganza include the contortionists the Long Twins, Chinese brothers who not only bend their bodies in impossible ways, but also slip their folded torsos into impossibly small cans and then balance on each other’s shoulders. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Curatola Brothers fling and flip each other through the air — landing on each other’s hands in an acrobatic act that looks as much like a dance as gymnastics. The trapeze work of the Aniskin Troupe was heart-stopping, as the performers not only somersaulted off the swing but leapt off the platform into the air, trusting catcher Oleg Aniskin to reach out and grab each one at just the right moment.
Juggler Picaso Jr. did some great work with ping-pong balls, starting by bouncing them off a paddle, then popping them out of his mouth, but when he started flinging plates up to the top of the tent and into the audience like Frisbees, running right up into the aisles to catch them, the crowd went wild.
This year’s animal acts included a horse routine that featured Sultan Kumisbayev standing atop two horses, as first they and then he leapt over a pole. And company member Regina Dobrovitskaya showed her versatility by going from an acrobatic act on the silks to working with Andrey Mantchev in a dog act that had a motley crew of rescued stray dogs leaping over and around them.
This year’s circus marks the arrival of a new artistic director, Guillaume Dufresnoy, and ringmaster Kevin Venardos, but cofounder and creative director Michael Christensen and director Steve Smith return to give the show a sense of continuity and cohesion.
While their jaws dropped watching some of Bello’s antics, the 12-year-old boys who accompanied me said watching Grandma lip-synch to a Britney Spears hit was one of their favorite moments. That mix of familiar and fantastic is the heart of the Big Apple’s success