The Last Garden Variety Show. Don't miss our epic finale! June 27. $10 tix online #calgary #sceneyyc http://t.co/8xwCLgcEPJ
— James Jordan (@GVS_varietyshow) June 19, 2013
@canadasmagic Buy Tickets to the next GVS online (even if you can't go) all online sales go to local flood relief.
— James Jordan (@GVS_varietyshow) June 24, 2013
@canadasmagic Buy Tickets to the next GVS online (even if you can't go) all online sales go to local flood relief.
— James Jordan (@GVS_varietyshow) June 24, 2013
While I'm performing at the Magic Festival in BC this week, I've pledged to donate 25% of ticket sales to @innfromthecold #yycflood
— Ryan Pilling (@WowRyan) June 24, 2013
RT @anndouglas: Show your support to people affected by Alberta floods by donating to @redcrosscanada: http://t.co/bp01SHDKnR #abflood
— Canada's Magic (@canadasmagic) June 21, 2013
MT @OrangeYYC: ING DIRECT is matching donations up to $25K for the @redcrosscanada to help those in AB. Log-in to your account for details.
— Canada's Magic (@canadasmagic) June 23, 2013
Chico and I are honoured to be on the cover of the UK's Rubber Chicken magazine! Nice read. pic.twitter.com/djsjmYhRdT
— Bill Abbott (@billabbottmagic) June 15, 2013
Don’t be fooled when you see Port Coquitlam’s mayor at the first annual Magic Festival on Sunday.
Greg Moore will not only cut the ribbon for the inaugural event at Leigh Square Community Arts Village, he’ll also saw a woman in half.
“It’ll be my wife,” Maple Ridge resident and festival organizer Shawn Farquhar said. “It’s all in good fun.”
Moore will take to the stage at 2 p.m. on June 23 and will be followed by a free family magic show by the Vancouver Magic Circle, Canada’s largest magic group headed up by PoCo’s Alex Seaman.
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Egg Harbor Township resident Chad Juros was diagnosed with leukemia in 1991 at age 3. Four years later, he relapsed and spent 17 months in the cancer ward, during which time his father, Dr. Donald Juros, kept his spirits up by teaching him magic tricks.
Sadly, soon after he was released from the hospital, his beloved father was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and passed away in 2000. In January 2003, Chad was once again confronted with grave illness, and when he recovered, he decided it was time to make his father’s dying wish his own living wish.
He founded the nonprofit Spread the Magic Foundation to fulfill his father’s hope that he would “continue to spread the magic around the world.” Today, Juros is an accomplished magician and inspirational speaker whose performances raise money for pediatric cancer care.
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Monday evening: George Brown House, an Ontario heritage building situated just south of the University of Toronto, is named, of course, after the distinguished Father of Confederation and founder of The Globe, the newspaper that became the newspaper you are reading. Normally off-limits to the great unwashed, Brown’s stately home was the venue chosen by Luminato’s go-to magic man, David Ben, to showcase the extraordinary legerdemain of American magician Steve Cohen.
The setting proved an apt backdrop for Cohen’s act, which owes a considerable debt to Johann Hofzinser, the 19th-century Austrian known as the father of card magic. At New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Cohen’s unofficial home, he typically entertains audiences of no more than 50. For the Toronto cohort, only slightly larger, the diminutive Cohen – nattily attired in morning coat, waistcoat and striped trousers – deftly stick-handled his way through a series of jaw-dropping tricks, each seemingly more difficult than the last.
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I straightened my bowtie and tucked in my pocket square this evening to see Steve Cohen perform his show Chamber Magic at George Brown House for Luminato, where the dress code is as fancy as the attendees (let’s just say that for this evening anyhow, his sobriquet The Millionaires’ Magician was well deserved). The show, a classic parlour magic display designed for close audiences, sent me running home to the interwebs to try to figure out how some of his tricks had been performed. I’ll say only this: even online, magicians are pretty tight-lipped.
The pleasure of a magic show is in allowing yourself to be amazed – and it’s nice to be able to stay amazed. Cohen’s skills are really a pleasure to watch as he performs of variety of tricks that are indeed bewildering and delightful. You understand that, on some level, something must be happening somewhere you can’t see it, but that feels beside the point for a moment (except to the gentleman sitting a bit in front of me, who murmured his guesses to his companion frequently). When the card is turned or the glass fills with the correct colour of liquid, we in the audience both expect it and cannot fathom it.
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We enjoyed being fooled. We pay good money to people who can trick us. We long for the impossible, and what Miguel Puga does is impossible, but there it is.
To help us catch him in his onstage trickery while we are seated in an auditorium, Sr. Puga shows some of his illusions live on a big screen, so we can scrutinize his hands. For openers, he mixes a deck of cards, draws the Ace of Hearts out of the deck, mixes again and draws again, until he has ‘randomly’ drawn out all the hearts in sequence from deuce to King. While his assistant at the piano, Ms. Paz Sabater, plays Manuel de Fallas’ El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician), Puga turns the cards face down and their backs spell out EL AMOR BRUJO. Impossible! How did he do it? I’ve no idea, but I want to see him do more ‘magic’. And he does.
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