West Bloomfield: Vitaly Beckman

From Detroit Jewish News:

Vitaly Beckman will perform Sunday, Feb. 18, at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts.

Vitaly Beckman easily remembers his first attempt at creating magical illusion.

Seven years old and living in the Soviet Union, he tried to imitate a magician he saw on television. The entertainer made a card castle appear under a handkerchief.

In a friend’s house at the time, Beckman noticed alphabet cubes and asked for a handkerchief. He put the cubes on his hand, assembled them like a castle and covered the pieces with a handkerchief just before his friend’s grandmother came into the room.

As soon as the woman appeared, Beckman pretended he didn’t see her and removed the handkerchief as if he made the cubes appear.

“She asked me how I did that,” Beckman recalls. “In reality, she probably played along, and I said that I created magic. I didn’t know why I said that, but many years later, I turned it into a career. For some reason, it seems like a prophesy.”

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