talkmagic.co.uk

[bananafish]

Shoot Ogawa.
http://www.shootogawa.com/
http://www.emagictricks.co.uk/product_i ... ts_id=4426
http://www.emagictricks.co.uk/product_i ... ts_id=4526

Last night the IMS hosted a lecture by Shoot Ogawa. If there ever was a good reason for joining a Magic Society – then last night was it. This guy was awesome.

I knew of Shoot Ogawa mainly from his “Ninja Rings” DVD. I also knew he was the “Academy of the Magic Arts” 2002 Close up Magician of the year, but I certainly didn’t expect anything as absolutely superb as the lecture he gave last night.

To much applause he did do his linking rings routine, and bearing in mind it was a lecture – and he was talking us through some of the moves very slowly it still looked just like magic. If anyone hasn’t seen the Ninja Rings DVD – then I can only suggest you buy it immediately. He really does make it look so easy and in fact, if anyone has a set of his gold rings that they wish to sell – please pm me.

Shoot Ogawa is definitely not a one trick pony though. As well as the rings he is also very skilled in most traditional close up work, specifically cards, coins and rope, but it is coins that I believe is his favourite and seeing the skill of the man I am not surprised in the least. I am also not surprised he won “close up magician of the year” last year.

He started off with some standard matrix tricks which I must admit impressed the heck out of me. I was lucky enough to be sitting in the front row and it was a pure joy to watch those coins disappearing and reappearing under cards. In fact one second they were all under one card and next thing you knew they were back in the original positions – with no cards on top.

Later, after the official lecture was over he was asked to do a double matrix. That is two close up mats side by side with 4 coins on each. The story goes was that at some point he had broken his left arm, which bearing in mind he is left handed would normally be a stopper to most close up magicians. Not for Shoot Ogawa however. No siree. He works out a routine for doing the matrix with just his right hand, and then when his left arm is healed decides he can do to matrixes side by side. I tell you – it was difficult to watch what he was doing with so many coins so goodness only knows how he coped with it all.

As mentioned before, he showed us a lot of card, rope and coin routines – and his insights on the psychology of what was happening was as interesting as the performance itself.

Another thing he did that really impressed me was his muscle pass. I have never seen one close up in the flesh before but to get the coin to jump up what must have been a couple of feet was just like someone had turned on an anti gravitational field. And to all intent and purposes the hand looked absolutely still. He then went on to show how useful the muscle pass was for all sorts of coin tricks. For example doing a retention pass, showing the coin missing from the hand – and then showing the coin also missing from the second hand (because he had used the muscle pass to sleeve the coin in the opposite sleeve).

I could go on and on about last night – but that would probably get boring. If you have a chance to see Shoot Ogawa in action then I definitely would recommend it. In short it was a very entertaining and informative night, and Shoot is a very exciting performer. He was also very friendly and very approachable. For last night alone, I am happy to be a member of my local magic society.

[bugnote]

hiya,

sounds awesome, was it being filmed for a future IMS release?

Bug

[bananafish]

As far as I know it wasn't recorded. In my experience this isn't allowed that often by the performer at such occasions.