Blackpool Convention 2010 – Part II
Sorry that you had to wait that long for Part II, but I’m just too busy at the moment with other projects. But now as promised Part II
Saturday
As Levent had introduced me to David Kaplan, who stopped by at our dinner table, I wanted to see his lecture, although it was the first in the morning starting 9:15am. As it turned out I was not able to figure out how to turn on hot water in my shower, so it got not a really good start into the day. (Did I tell you British B&Bs can be sort of an adventure 
Later I was told that I have to pull a switch outside the shower)
Lecture David Kaplan
To my shame I had not heard anything about David Kaplan before, so I was curious what he would talk about. As it turned out David is a real pro. He does a very entertaining and funny combination of juggling and comedy magic. I will talk more about this when I tell you about the gala shows.
First he showed us some stunts with a cane (how to kick it up from the floor) and how to juggle a hat. I particular liked the following little gem were he balanced a silver dollar on his fingers and let it drop backwards into his hand in slow motion. The secret was so simple that we all did not want to believe it. Just as a hint it involves matches or tooth picks.
David gave us a practical advice on how to improve our patter. Audio record your show. Only Audio, no video! And then transcribe it word by word. Also note the audience reactions. Then go over the transcript and kill everything that did not help the act. He said that he did this in the past and cut down his earlier act by about 20minutes just by shortening patter. Instead of this he could then add some more tricks. And even today he would do this once a year to make sure his act keeps as sharp as possible.
I also liked the nice and sweet piece of comedy he calls “Big headache” where he opens up a small pill tube and suddenly dumps out a giant pill onto his hand, finally swallowing it with a lot of effort.
His humor is part slap stick, part of a more silent sort. Often he is the last who realizes something is happening or terribly going wrong. I recall in this context his cite of Buster Keaton: “The audience loves a slow thinker”
As he works alone on stage, he gets into conflict with his props quite often. So suddenly the sign of his suit case falls off, a little explosion happens and much more things like this. Also he encompasses all his actions with cute audio effects that enhance the impact of his show enormous. That brings us to the second half of his lecture. There he explained his electronic control system that he uses to control all his special effects. He uses the MediaStar System from CES. As I’m currently working on my own stage control system this was very interesting for me
If you get a chance to see him lecture, go for it. He is a very funny and a really nice guy who has something to tell.
VIP lecture Levent
Up to this year you could buy a special VIP card for Blackpool that entitled you to visit certain VIP lectures and shows in a much more intimate setting as the rest of the events. (Interestingly the convention brochure states that there won’t be any VIP cards for 2011).
This year I decided too late to go to Blackpool to get a VIP ticket. Luckily as I was helping Levent with the preparation of his VIP lecture I got the chance to get into these sacred halls and could watch the close up shows of Dimond Jim Taylor, Henry Evans and Levent’s VIP lecture about Cardini’s and Roy Benson’s billiard routines.
Till today there is no footage of Cardini doing his famous billiard act available, although many of the old timers were praising it even more than his well known card act. Levent now did something amazing. He reconstructed for his new DVD on billiard balls the whole Cardini billiard act and shot it in Cardini costume. The result is truly amazing. Here you can have a sneak preview. Levent also gave a very logical reason why Cardini’s billiards are not available on video. His billiard act relies in big parts on colored balls and color chances. This would not be really impressive if shot in black and white as usual in his time. So he may have decided not to show it at all in TV Shows.
One highlight for sure was that he showed a not publicly available video of Roy Benson performing his billiard act, a chance you won’t get that easy again.
If you have missed this lecture, I can ease you: Besides the Benson video, all and more details of this lecture are on Levent’s new Billiards DVD which I will review soon her on this blog.
The rest of the afternoon I spend strolling over the dealers fair and taking a short nap at my hotel to be fit for the evening gala show and competition.
Intercontinental Stage Magic Championships
Saturday evening is traditional the time for a stage championship and a small gala in the opera house. The gala was scheduled to start at 7:00pm but finally began at 7:40pm. I’m almost tempted to write “as usual”
The opera house was packed as always. This time I got a seat in the rear stalls and I was surprised about how good I could see the stage from there. The last two years I have been always on the balcony.
To keep the crowd happy the Blackpool Magician’s Club had booked the Singer Victor Michael. He had a tough job to do. Just imagine that over the first 20 minutes there were still people entering the theater and so he got not much attention. But the succeeded with bravura which resulted from his great and extremely flexible voice. He presented a mixture of classical opera pieces, best of musicals and modern classics. It has to be said that he is not a classic opera singer and I guess he would not manage to reach all the audience without a microphone, but I enjoyed listening to him again and he made the waiting much more entertaining.
Tony Stevens was the MC of the evening and as I – as a non native speaker – can say he is really funny. He presented a mixture of jokes, funny pictures he took, a video that made fun of Franz Harary alias Hans Ferrari and a lot of sarcastic comments on the Blackpool Magician’s Club. As last year everybody was invited to send him comments or jokes on his mobile phone by SMS. Compared with the MC of the Sunday gala he was far superior. Actually I don’t know why they don’t let him MC the big gala on Sunday.
The evening started with the “Intercontinental Stage Magic Championships” (what a name ) interesting to note, last year the winner got a price of $10.000 and second and third as far as I recall of $1000. This year the winner only got £1000 the others no money. Seems that the financial crisis did not stop at the doors of Gringotts.
Unfortunately I was not able to find pictures of all participators:
Dave Allen & Carl Charlsworth – Comedy Magic – UK
They tried a private eye parody. One of them was sitting a a desk miming Sam Spade. The other one dressed as a “girl” came to him to offer a job. I don’t recall much of the act because it was quite chaotic. The whole time there was a voice over that told us the thoughts of the guy and sudden magic effects happened while the story went on. As such not a bad idea, but they terribly failed. As said it was chaotic, the effects were so small that you missed half of them of just wondered if something magical just happened. If you want to see how great such attempt CAN be, have a look at Wayne Dobson’s Sam Shovel. I guess they got inspired by him but sadly failed to compare.
Jung Min Lee – Manipulation – Korea - SECOND PLACE
A you very simpatico young Korean boy that connected very well with the audience. He was dressed a bit in punk style and presented a fast paced manipulation act with….well, I think it should have been drum sticks but just lets say sticks that appeared, changed colours and so on. I think the act was not very magical as a lot of the productions and vanishes were not really convincing as you never saw both sides of his hands. Although I would say eye candy, good music, good choreography and he got real good rapport from the audience.
Hyung Joom Kim – Manipulation – Korea – FIRST PLACE
Slick, flawless, classic manipulation with cards and billiard balls. Hyung dressed in tails in a modern cut also was very likable, though the other Korean manipulator connected a bit better with the audience. Technically on a high level the first half with cards was too fast for my taste. I really had problems to realize every effect that took place. I think his act could be much better if he would slow down a bit. But it seems that high speed manipulation is en vogue in Asia. His second part with the balls was very good. Not as fast paced and every effect clear. He deservedly won first price
Mist – Illusions – UK
Mist presented a fast paced up to date but also standard illusion act. Taking into account that it’s now two weeks ago since I saw them, I don’t recall any specific illusion that really impressed me, besides the opening that was half video installation half real appearing of Sean Alexander. What I do recall and what impressed me is that Sean’s partner Vanessa Hudson is a bit heavier built than typical show girls that have to get compressed in illusion bases and still she was able to do her job perfectly.
One advice that I would give Mist if they ever want to extend their working field to German speaking countries is to reconsider their name. “Mist” means in German just dung, a reason why the Rolls-Royce changed the name of one of their models from “Silver Mist” to “Silver Shadow”.
Sandro Rivoli – General Magic – Austria – THIRD PLACE
(On request from Sandro Rivoli I had to remove his picture)
I never had heard anything about Mr. Rivoli, but we were told that he is a professional magician who works most of his time in circuses. He presented a mixture of general standard magic, a bit card manipulation and at the end a rope cutting routine with a spectator helper. All silent to music. To me he appeared almost arrogant and not really likable. As such he did not connect with the audience at all, as you could easy judge from the missing applause. How he got the idea to include a trick with audience involvement in a silent act and to leave the stage for several seconds to get his helper will keep his only mystery to me. I have no clue why the jury awarded him the third place. Admitted that the two other acts where not much better, at least Mist connected much better with the audience.
I wonder why this well perceived competition does not draw better participators to Blackpool. Besides the winner of the first price Jung Min Lee the standard was pretty low. Interestingly like last year magicians from the far east take the chance to get known. The winner of last year competition Han Seol-Hui with his CD manipulation got widely known since his appearance on this stage.
After the part wise hard to enduring competition the organizers mollified us with a mini gala with international stars, this year named:
Cirque Du Magie
The Great Kaplan opened the Cirque Du Magie and I really enjoyed him. I won’t tell you more about his act here. You will read more about him in my report about the Sunday gala show.
Clive Webb & Danny Adams are a UK comedy Duo/Trio of the trash/chaotic sort. They started as painters to renovate the stage. Not long into it and the whole act went into a giant colored foam/mud fight. And I have to admit, they are so funny and directly reach a deep in the brain stem located sense of humor that I cried laughing. What a mess they created on stage 
The whole committee of Blackpool Magician’s Club was bathed with foam to the joy of the whole audience. I was reminded of the joy we had watching Stan & Olli in a cake fight as kids.
Banachek, I think does not need to be introduced. It was the first time that I got the chance to see him perform. He definitely impressed my. He started with cold reading that was so incredible that I’m still flabbergasted. He continued with a book test and closed with a very strong question and answer act. Banachek has gained a bit weight since the DVDs were shot that I know of him but it suits him well. For a pure mental act he was fortunately really entertaining.
Also for the first time I enjoyed David Williamson live on stage. He started with his interpretation of swallowing needles with a lot of funny byplay with a female helper. Next he called all kids in the theater up on stage and we were surprised how many young children were in the audience. He made a lot of fun with them and finally introduced Rocky his raccoon. He really is a great showman and I only can envy him for his gift to get on stage wearing a plaid shirt, worn jeans and sneakers and we love him regardless what he is doing. He can get along with jokes most of us would just look silly, he is just funny. My only minus: Not all of the kids really looked as if they had fun on stage.
David & Dania are billed as the greatest quick change act of the world so my expectations were high, maybe too high. I have once watched a brilliant quick change act in the Russian National Circus in Moscow and compared to that their act is just boring, sorry to state this so bluntly. Neither are they really that fast in changing nor is the pace of the whole act fast enough. As they were also billed in the Sunday gala show they showed on Saturday a slight variation of the Sunday act which encompasses a lot of dispensable and unmagical productions of feather flowers.
Meanwhile the show lasted about 3,5 hours and besides the small drawbacks I had a great evening. I only had wished that Clive Webb and Danny Adams would have been placed later into the show to vary the pace of the show as a whole.
More to come….(hopefully soon )
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Thanks, Very useful resource!!