Join the "Bellobration": this year's circus truly is a clown's delight.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.
• Position: Entertainment - Demetrius Alexandro Claudio

DEMETRIUS ALEXANDRO CLAUDIO Amadeus Bello Nock, or just plain Bello, is anything but plain. "I never focused on being different," he maintains. "I'm just naturally a different person." And how! For starters, this is first time in the 137-year history of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that a production has been named after a performer.

However, Bello (a seventh-generation member of a Swiss circus dynasty) views his role in The Greatest Show On Earth's "Bellobration" not only as a performer, but as an artist, engineer, and creator--and with good reason. Like his father before him, he designs most of his own equipment, including the uniquely contrived double Wheel of Steel, on which he defies gravity in a heart-stopping cat-and-mouse routine along-side childhood friend Nikolas Wallenda.

Meanwhile, Nikolas' wife, Erendira, partners with Bello on one of his most dating signature acts, the aptly named Sway Pole, which was invented by his father, whom Bello credits with teaching him nearly every circus skill and apparatus. Actually, it's two poles, both 68 feet high and, like with the Wheel of Steel, Bello and his respective partner leave the audience gasping in disbelief one moment and then exhaling in relieved laughter the next. Little wonder that, by age nine, Bello, joined by his brothers, was part of a tight-rope-walking troupe known as The Nerveless Nocks. "It's daredevil stuff: it's comedy--it's shocking and scaring people, as well as making them laugh. So I like to say "scaring them silly,' "says the 39-year-old father of three.

Drawing on performance roots that date from 18th-century Europe and a host of ancestors that include not only famed daredevils and acrobats, but renowned musicians...