THE BALLOON MAN

Death-defying show at Global Village

Perched over 60 feet above the crowd’s heads, a thin stretched of cable is the aerial highway of John and Alexandra Nock known as the seventh generation SkyKings balancing motorcycle rides and performing death defying ‘thrill shows’ that leave everyone on the ground breathless for a moment.
They could fall any moment off a wrong manoeuvre, but they continue to amaze the spectators from all ages in different countries across the world.
To them the risk fades in the laughters and the hand clapping of approval from the audience as they perform together the Skycycle Highwire Show.
Visiting Dubai for the first time to perform three times daily until December 11 at the Global Village, John and Alexandra have started training gymnastics and simple stunts at an early age.
They have three children - Andrew, 14, Thomas, 8 and Patrick, 7 - who are studying to be professionals one day. But, the Nock couple is open to possibilities that their three sons may decide to take the same death defying aerial shows with them in the future.
John told Khaleej Times in an exclusive interview that his father trained him as early as two years old in gymnastics, circus skills and stunts until at nine when he started joining his dad as a professional highwire performer.
“Dad just told me one day, John your time has come to perform with me. That is it. Until now, the Nock family, has continued to wow the world for its straight seven generations of ?performers.”
The Nock family hailed in Switzerland until 1950 when it travelled to the USA and made it its home.
Alexandra, John’s wife, also belonged to a skycycle highwire performer whose parents trained her at six years old. She and John are training their children now on basic circus skills, balancing and gymnastics after their classes in preparation for future performance on mid-air.
Alexandra told Khaleej Times that they feel fulfilled every time they see the crowd looking at them in awe or simply smiling and clapping their hands for approval of what they are ?doing on air.
“I love performing here in Dubai because people are friendly and they really crowd us after our performance to greet us. The weather is also perfect.”
John and Alexandra are safety conscious, putting their security in air first before anything else.
Since joining their families in the risk of performing space wheel and riding together in a motorcycle and doing balancing and stunts while on mid-air, they have not met with any ?accident at all. “We make sure the weather condition is perfect. Windy and humid atmosphere are the only things we should pay attention to before performing. In Toronto, Canada, we delayed our performance for two hours last year because it was windy and the cable could swing as we performed. In India, we cancelled our performance in June this year for a day due to an extremely humid condition. It was too wet that could hamper our success.”
The long years of experience in thrill shows have embedded in them the wisdom and understanding of nature’s favourable or unfavourable effects on their shows that they have become very successful skycycle highwire performers. Time magazine called them the ‘True ambassadors of entertainment’.
(Khaleej Times)