Hi everyone!
I did a couple of performances recently and I wanted to share them with you. Unfortunately I forgot to video either so I'm just going to have to tell you about them.
The first was a performance for the Pentacle club. The second was for a dog.
The Pentacle Club, for those who don't know is a local magic society that recently had it's 90th anniversary, just before I joined last year.
The dog is called Amber.
Previously I'd performed for the Pentacle Club at Christmas, and the routine went a little wrong, I mentioned it at the time. Basically when you do a rope routine with something other than rope, you'd better make sure it moves exactly the same as rope. This time, I used ropes. Used everything I'd learned from Fiber Optics, including a little rope and ring thing. Unlike any time before however, I focussed on making jokes through the routine, to space out the moves a little, slow it down, even did a Uri Gellar impersonation before a middle removal. held the rope up with the top looped like a spoon and rubbed it, talking about how it was going soft, and then gave it a little shake to prove it
For the dog I did a french drop with a piece of sausage.
After the rope routine I followed up with a little classic sleight of hand, the Doc Eason take on 'two in the hand, one in the pocket' All Scrwwed up, but with the lwedness removed and the focus on using a wand (Doc Eason doesn't use a wand, but I like wands) as a tool. It went quite well.
Amber went for the empty hand, believing it to contain a piece of sausage. When it did not she was confused.
I got a round of applause for my routine even though the ropes ended a little sloppily. I've since figured out how to tighten up the ending. Funny how immediately after a performance you come away with improvements for next time. I think that piece will become part of my audition routine. One of my new years resolutions this year is to get into a magic society which has an audition process. I feel like I'm well on the way to being up to scratch, particularly because of my renewed focus on delivery. Many people told me that my patter was good and asked if it was my own material. I was very pleased to tell them that most of it was.
Unlike a human audience, Amber was pleased to learn that the sausage was in my other hand. It has since been suggested that a dog would be more interested in the production of a sausage, not a vanish.
Next week I'm going to perform for the Pentacle Club again, the theme of the evening is "my favourite dealer effect" and as it happens I recently got a new set of sponge bunnies, which is oddly fitting as the first thing I ever performed for anyone was a self working sponge bunnies routine. This time I'm going to do it with a bit more sleight of hand and less hands slightly trembling as they desperately emerge from pockets trying to both relax and stay tightly shut...
After considering the possibilities of sausage production, I realised that to dogs, humans producing food from nowhere is a common occurrence. Amber probably would have gone for the empty hand even if she hadn't seen me handling any diced hot dog before.
The moral here is perform to humans, dogs don't understand the art.
-Stacy
