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Performance Magic: What Moves You Guys?

posted by janrinok on Sunday March 30 2014, @07:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-see-it dept.

The Burnaby Kid writes:

Figured I'd toss this out there, since SN was asking for interesting story submissions. I'm a professional magician working abroad, and I've been indulging in this incredibly geeky performing art for almost two decades. One problem that happens a lot when it comes to magic is that the nature of secrecy means that we don't get open dialogue with the muggles we perform for, and that leads to us getting into this weird sort of insular and incestuous discussion with other magicians, which ends up warping our minds to the extent that we start doing moronic things like... oh, I don't know... referring to our audience members as "muggles". We get into some pretty weird debates, and I've been trying my best to argue for raising the bar, such as by suggesting that we need to be more sensitive about what you guys like, such as by making sure that if we pull out a deck of cards, we've got something to perform that can compete with Card Through Window. And yet... Maybe I've got it wrong? What DO you guys like? If you like watching magicians perform, what do you like about it? If you don't, why not?

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:09AM

    by TheLink (332) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:09AM (#23106) Journal

    I quite like this one of Jason Latimer's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJN1iMOfgAc [youtube.com]
    Very simple to "get" - some of those fancier tricks require the audience to pay attention first to realize the "magic", this one has the audience realize the magic and then start paying more attention ;). And yet still impressive.

    Then there's An Ha Lim who clearly has cards up his sleeves (and elsewhere from a few mistakes ;) ) but the sheer scale of it makes it still impressive to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWG8QppPet8 [youtube.com] (second part is clearer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHjaRbTfHmQ [youtube.com] ). A deck or two up each sleeves is one thing. I wonder how long it takes to re-set everything up for practice...

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday March 30 2014, @12:51PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday March 30 2014, @12:51PM (#23140) Journal

    Exactly this Jason Latimer guy is what is wrong with magic (didn't watch his whole youtube show... couldn't... he was too smug and not entertaining)

    He thought he was SO BIG, when he isn't. If he could solve the Quantum/Gravity problem while doing it, my opinion would change and he'd have a reason to be smug.

    But he is not that big. He can do a trick. Wooh!

    Meh.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---