Noelle Franco Steps Outside of Her Father's Footsteps

After finishing one of the longest apprenticeships in the history of juggling, Noelle Franco launched her own career in January at Circus Circus in Reno. Though the 20-year-old daughter of noted performer Dick Franco has appeared on stage since age 3, the circumstances of this engagement mark it as a definite beginning in her life.

"This is solo-solo!" she said. "I've always been very close to my parents, but they're not here with me now. I'm staying in a house paying my own rent and I have a car... it's the real world now!"

No young juggler has probably ever been more prepared to leave the family fold, however. Noelle has traveled with, worked for, performed with and practiced with her globe-trotting father and her mother, Carlene, her entire life. "It's been quite an interesting life," she said. "There were times I wished I had a normal life, because I was never at the same school with the same friends, but you couldn't pay me to go back and change it now."

At Circus Circus she presents eight-minute shows six days a week ­ twice a day for four days and thrice a day for two days. It begins with a short three ball run taken almost move for move from her father. But the rest of the routine is all hers. She spins back to center stage with scarves in her belt, doing three and then four.

Her careful choreog­raphy comes through most clearly in the next section, where she beats a devil stick back and forth in perfect time to her music. The music she uses is digitally broadcast, but a live keyboard player and drummer play along to heighten the effect.

The last section is with diabolo. She does tricks with one, then starts a series of high tosses during which she jumps over the string like a jump rope. She works up to a drum roll for five jumps, then intentionally misses at that level the first time to build tension. She tries again and catches the rapidly falling diabolo perfectly.

The music picks back up as she does a few tricks with one, then a second diabolo stored in a mechanical box is tossed out to her for a brief run with two diabolos for a finale. That prop is her favorite, she said. "I've been doing that since I was real young, maybe six. I've been doing it so long I don't even remember learning it."

Her father's guidance and teaching is apparent in the perfection of her presentation and careful choreography to the music. When it became apparent in the last year that Noelle wanted to perform solo, rather than just with her father, Dick established a rehearsal program to help her reach her goal. She would go into the theatre in the Bahamas where they were performing about three hours before each show, warm up with rudimentary moves and then do her "50s" of each trick in her act in order. She had to make 50 repetitions of the trick before she could move on to the next one.

When Dick arrived at the theatre he would watch and correct any tricks that were giving her trouble. Following his show, she would work two of her own shows to music straight through with no audience. She had to salvage misses and catch up to the music, so time was spent practicing drops and recoveries also.

 Dick claims Noelle has never had a great  deal of natural ability as a juggler, but had to work long and hard to become consistent with all her props. She concedes that point readily, "I wasn't sure I wanted to do this for a living at all," she said. "I'm lazy and just hate to practice. The tricks don't come easy to me."

After many years of practice and instruction, she still can't do head rolls with a ball. She said, "I can do five balls and rings, but I hate numbers. Dad had me work on seven rings for a while but I hated it. I'd rather take a simple prop and do something that nobody else has done with it."

Her strength has always been a strong personality and love of the stage. Dick said, "Her bows were incredible! She often had to practice her routines to get them as good as her bows! "

At the end of three months intensive practice in the Bahamas, though, the act was smooth enough to sell.  Busch Gardens agreed to let her fill in for an act on its days off. Noelle said that brief engagement was a turning point. "I was hooked," she said. "It's totally different being out there on your own with your personal reputation on the line, rather than having someone to back you up and make a joke about it if you miss. It's a rush, it really gets my adreneline going."

Dick already had a contract for them to work together at the Circus Circus.  But rather than do their double act, Dick convinced the management to allow him to do the shows at night and Noelle to do day shows. If the management didn't like her act, Dick was prepared to replace her and do all the slots. But things went well, and Circus Circus granted her a five month solo engagement, which runs from January to June this year.