Our friend, and Vanishing Inc. megastar Rune Klan, recently performed for Queen Magrethe II of Denmark for her 70th birthday party. Here’s a YouTube clip of him performing one of his signature pieces (included in our latest book, Rune’s World, of course) for the Queen on a national Danish television channel:
Last weekend I had the exhausting, but rewarding task of manning the Vanishing Inc. dealer stand at the Blackpool Magic Convention. I met dozens and dozens of customers who all had very nice things to say about our products and website. My fiancee Sarah and friends Kerry and Fritz helped out behind the stand over the weekend as we all had a lot of fun.
I thought it might be interesting for those who couldn’t make it to the convention, so here goes:
Thanks to everyone who stopped by the stand! Our next stand in the UK will be at the Bristol Day of Magic in May.
I am always proud to bring new talent to The Session and this year my friend Matthew Wright was a big hit. He performed his original magic in all three shows and for many, was a highlight of the convention. Here’s a video of him performing his amazing Poker Face routine in the evening show on the last day of the convention. I hope you enjoy his presence, clever routining and enjoyable performance as much as we did when he performed it live.
Joshua Jay will be lecturing at the following places and I will be traveling with him. We’ll have the complete Vanishing Inc. line of exclusive with us and hope to meet some of you during the tour.
16 – 17 Jan: The Session, Gloucester
18 Jan: Newcastle
19 Jan: Manchester
20 Jan: Blackpool
21 Jan: Sussex
22 Jan: London (International Magic)
We hope to see you there!
I recently spent a few minutes interviewing the creator of Prevaricator, Patrick Redford, about his amazing trick and his thoughts behind it.
You can play the 20-minute interview below to hear about the trick, how Patrick created it, how he ensures that the trick works 100% of the time and how he presents it:
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Download it here: http://www.vanishingincmagic.com/clog/files/patrick-redford-interview.mp3
Check out more info on Prevaricator here.
We asked stars of The Session 2010 (Jan 16 – 17 2010) to talk about their all new lectures that they’ll be performing at The Session. Here’s what they had to say:
Having such an enthusiastic reader base, we thought it would be interesting to generate some interesting statistics on the world’s strongest card tricks. Hugard’s Magic Monthly did something like this over fifty years ago but to my knowledge, there hasn’t been such a survey since.
The results so far are interesting, but it can only really work if we get enough people involved. So, we would really appreciate it if you could help out by completing the (short) survey here:
http://www.vanishingincmagic.com/surveys/best-card-tricks/
We’ll be reporting on the results of the survey in a special event hosted by Joshua Jay at The Session 2010 (of which only 14 tickets remain at the time of writing) and will also send the results to everyone that participates.
There’s an age old cliché that has been bothering me recently: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. It’s bothering me because it’s wrong, especially when I hear it applied to magicians and the opening of their act.
An example: at the International Convention recently, a friend and I made a pact; if within the first minute, we thought the act was rubbish, we’d leave. Ten seconds in, I was convinced that it was time to leave. The act’s introduction left me cold and it didn’t show any sign of improving.
But then, just as we were edging forward to leave our seats, something happened. I laughed. I laughed again, and again. It was one of the best acts I saw during the entire convention. This act was good, but their introduction wasn’t.
This happens all the time in magic so I wanted to point out that it is possible to save your introduction if you bomb within the first few minutes. You have to work way harder later in your act, but it is possible to turn your audience around after as poor introduction (whether it’s your fault or not). The key, I think, is to not stop looking at your introduction as your first minute with the group, but as your first performance and you’ll always be focused to give a great performance every single time.
I’ve seen a lot of magic performed over these past few months and there’s one word that keeps popping into my head and I’ve never heard magicians talk about it before. That word is relevance.
Magicians will always tell you that a magic performance must be entertaining and that it must be fooling (and I wholeheartedly agree with them), but in my mind, unless it’s relevant neither of those things really matter.
Here are some questions that I think every magician needs to ask themselves:
- Are you relevant for the audience and venue that you are performing for?
- Are your presentations relevant and up to date or are you still using patter from twenty years ago?
- Are your tricks relevant to your audience? This is the only way you’ll make them care about the tricks that you’re performing.
- Are your props relevant to your personality, age, performance style and the environment that you’re performing in?
In my mind, however technically good you are, or however funny your presentations are, you’ve already lost the battle if you can’t answer yes to all four of those questions.
Our great friend (and star of CoinRUNEque) Rune Klan appears on the cover of the November 2009 MAGIC Magazine:
The article was penned by Vanishing Inc. cofounder Joshua Jay and providers a great insight to this interesting Danish celebrity and close-up magician. We’re proud to have one of our best friends and biggest supporters features so prominently in the magic press!
For those looking for a little more of Rune’s amazing magic, we’re actively working on Rune’s book, set for a 2010 release.
