For those of you who missed it, or for those that want to remember what a great weekend it was, here is our video of the 37th International Magic Convention (we suggest putting on Kylie - WOW! when you listen to it for the full effect!). We’d like to thank MacMillan family for their permission and help with reporting the convention. We’ll have a full summary review soon, but until then, enjoy..

If you remember from one of our podcasts that Noel Britten was so confident that no one would guess the “special event” at this years International Magic Convention, that he asked attendees to try and guess who the big suprise guest was.
Well we can reveal that only one person successully guessed that the special event was, of course as we all now know.. Uri Geller.
Congratulations to Ken Figg, who gets his registration fee for this years International Magic Convention refunded. Well done Ken!!

The 2008 Gala Show of Magic and Variety took place at the Shaw Theatre, and feature the cream of the talent appearing at the 37th International Magic Convention.

MC’ed by Noel Britten, the first to the stage was the manipulation skills of Soma from Hungary. Performing flawless manipulations with mobile phones he was a joy to watch, there were also a number of lovely switches from coins and phones to full newspapers, and lovely coin productions and manipulations. A fantastic start to the show.

Next up was David Kaplan, his previous show from the Friday night had left me a bit cold, but he made up for that in this performance, comedy, juggling and magic featuring the infamous bowling ball, some clever play on it and faultless comedy timing. He was a real hit with the mostly non magic audience, and really brought the vaudeville feel back!

Noel then introduced Peter Salelson from the USA, he did some wonderful magic, and a gypsy thread, a story based presentation of the mismade umbrella using two audience members, and again caused a number of ‘oohs’ from the non magic audience members sat around me.

To close the first half, Rafael did the first of this three appearances in the show. This time featuring his world premier of his Quick Change act that he mentioned in our podcast. The set was very good, with a number fo nice changes as his lovely assistant changed from a long flowing dress into a leather little number, followed by another dress, Rafael changed through many waistcoats, into a full dinner jacket, before his assistance changed to a full bridal gown as the happy couple walked off stage to huge applause.

The second half opened with Robert & Emiel, a ’second sight’ act that I forst saw at FISM in stockholm, presented well with ‘Robert’ being a ‘boy trapped in a mans body, having a special gift to see..’. Which works extremely well, as objects in the audience are pointed at and Robert quickly names or describes them. The pace picked up as Emiel ran round the audience pointing to objects quickly, as Robert named them successfully. Ending with a driving licence description and correctly naming the serial number on a audience members £20 note, they also brought huge applause.

Rob Lavar was next up from the UK, a comedy Ping Pong ball mouth juggler, creating a lot of laughter as he shot up to five ping pong balls from his mouth against gin bottles to play tunes, and the floor and targets on the stage.

Andrew Goldenhersh really wowed the audience with the production of a live butterfly from a tattoo on his arm, a wonderful misers dream with a small boy from the audience, Andrew also pulled jumbo coins from behind the boys ear and inside his jacket. He finished on a straight jacket escape, producing a live chicken from the jacket as he escaped!

Rafael appeared twice more, once with a wonderful premier of a ‘animated woman’.  producing himself from a large box carried on by a ‘dwarf’, he animated a body-less head, which then floated over to a headless womans body as a zombie ball type effect, before the headless body was complete again, and walking round the stage.

The second of his slots which closed the show was a clear sub trunk effect, swords where pushed through a clear glass box, visually trapping his assistant, a fast switch under a curtain showed Rafael had swapped places with his assistant and was again trapped in her place. On his release from the clear sword box, it was clear this wasnt’ Rafael, but MC Noel Britten, Rafael running from the back of the theatre to huge applause.

Red Hat was also a late addition to the show, performing his excellent mask manipulation act, which also wowed the audience members.

A truly excellent show with a great line up of fresh acts that haven’t had huge exposure over here, or were like Rafael, presenting something completely new and unseen before in the UK, or even the world.

A fantastic show as always from the International Magic Convention.

We can reveal that at the 37th International Magic Convention in London, Famous ‘Mystifier’ Uri Geller was awarded the Berglas Foundation - Services to Magic Award, by it’s Chairman, highly acclaimed International Man of Mystery David Berglas MIMC.

We were there to cover the event that was only made public a few moments before Geller arrived at the venue, having flown in especially for the event from Germany.

The presentation was followed by an exclusive interview and question and answer session to those present.

Uri spoke surprisingly openly about his career, his views, the award itself, and his current projects.

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Denis Behr had already given an amazing performance earlier, so this lecture was going to be very popular with the card workers.

Including some nice gambling and poker hand effects, Denis explained showing that alot of the effects were actually quite simple, even if the effects themselves looked more.

Denis answered a lot of questions as the session went on which meant that a number of moves and techniques were also explained in some detail, these mainly covered false cuts and shuffles, and controlling cards as needed.

It was a good lecture, showing that Denis really knows his sources and his work.

Andrews lecture was very much about “getting real” and before he started said that it would be very much a non trick lecture.

In a break from your normal lecture Andrew started with playing the acustic guitar. He used this to demonstrate the advantage of “breaking the rules” and how playing an acustic guitar in an unconventional way provides a much bigger palette of sounds, and this can be applied to our magic.

First steps was aerobics for the hands, as Andrew took the audience through a number of exercises for the hands, designed by Greg Erwin to strengthen and traing our hands to be more flexible and strong. Weird as it was everyone was finding complex finger movements became eaiser in just this short time. The idea behind this was to streach us beyond what we’d normally need so that the difficult moves in magic could become easier.

Andrew also took the audience through some character discovery techniques that he has used with teachers and people to fond their “inner entertainer”. The audience started to write top tens of what people like about them, what people dislike about them, what they liked about magic, things they hated about magic and what where their top ten interests outside magic.

By looking at these lists Andrew explained that all the negative things could actually be things good about our performance, and the things on those lists could actually play as strengths or personas that could create the performer, and also how the things that don’t work, can help create.

A very different but thought provoking lecture, and definately something to revisit after the weekend.

Many thanks to Matt Buckland for the photo.