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I agree. People have seen too many levitations and now that almost everyone knows how the Balducci is done, they know that levitations are not real. You would be much better off learning other forms of magic.

mccabe24 wrote:almost everyone knows how the Balducci is done

I was of the same thinking, but it seems that this statement is quite untrue.

I still perform the balducci regularly and still get unbelievable reactions. A couple of people might know it but you can play it off with a joke like ' Damn, I thought I could convince you I could float.. oh well, let me try this'' then do a levitation of a card or anything else..

In general though, plenty young people dont know this and still are shoked, and you can really knock the wind out of old people

Whilst on the subject of Levatation (sic.), has anyone here ever had any success using the cat/toast principle?

Yorkshire Pudding, your talking I presume of combining the fact that toast ALWAYS lands butter side down and that cats ALWAYS land feet first.

Sorry mods about to expose, but for purly scientific purposes

Yes you can indeed butter the top side of a cat and drop it from a hight of about four feet for levitation purposes.(if the animal rights guys object, then use margerine as this way you are not comprimising the integrity of any cows bovine rights not to produce milk)
It was thought that the cat would now spin in mid air indefinatly as the laws of physics first tried to land the cat feet first and then land it butter side (back) first. However as the speed of spin increases so does the dizzyness of the cat. This reduces the cats ability to land on its feet to a point where the amount of butter on it's back takes over (ability to land butter side down remains constant as amount of butter is constant) and the cat starts to fall.
The cat not being used to landing on its back will allow its natural defence responses to take over and will use the by now very fast spin to launch itself at speed in any random direction. It will do this with all four feet outstreached and with claws fully extended ready to shred the first thing it meets, and thus is to dangerouse a trick to be performed in public.

Could you not stabilise the cat/toast combo by attaching additional pieces of toast on outriggers to either side of the cat... a bit like a CATamaran I suppose.... <groan>

Surely this would solve the inherent instability problem and result in an effective, workable levitation?

Actually I made a piece for someone of note that used the Toast & Kitty idea and have performed my version of what I called "The Perpetual Motion Levitation" several times... the inspiration came from a back issue of OMNI Magazine long ago.

Does it work better with any particular breed of cat? Or any particular brand of toast/butter for that matter...?

aye, he only uses the baldicucci levitation (or kings for the camera, but for audiences its just baldicucci), which is extremely easy to figure out if you watch it enough times. I will give you a hint. Go to youtube and look for him preforming it, and watch the angle he always does it at. With magic tricks like that, there is really only one way to do it, the trick is finding it.

Good luck

Oh, and about the two to three feet one, i never saw him do that, just criss angel ( i lost respect for him, he uses far too many camera tricks)