Careful What You Ask For... Just Kidding

I sent out feelers about my Dec 19th performance at South Side Dance Force.
I have two email responses.
Both of which are spot on the mark!
Here is one from a friend named Mary:
"The show was wonderful. Your delivery of the performance was great and the stories added a lot to enhance the routine. You kept everyone entertained and astounded. I periodically checked around the audience and saw a lot of amazed audiences and of course lots of laughter. I did not see any lack of skills and I tried to look at the opposite hand, but could not keep my focus there. All of my friends and family were stumped and amazed (I had brought 8 people - of course 4 of them were from one family).

I do have one suggestion for you and I don't know if it is possible. You need some sort of portable platform to stand on. The people in the back could not see what you were doing at the table."

My Response:

Thank you Mary,
All great comments.
I have been trying to figure out how to have the people in the back see the table when I am performing on it. (Maybe just ask them to stand for the cups and balls?)
We actually had them sitting on raised platforms, I guess they weren't high enough. I will keep trying.
Maybe a combination of both, me raised as well as them?
Thank you again,
Happy New Year
Tim"

This next one is from a magician friend of mine, so he looks at it thru magicians eyes!

"Tim,

What a wonderful treat to see you perform. We had a great time. We were thoroughly entertained. You seemed very natural performing. The hour long performance seemed to fly by.

There were a few things that I noticed that may or may not be of any consequence but here they are:

You made good eye contact with the audience.

I never really liked the chinese stick routine before because if you don't time it just right, ( if the hand pulling the tassle down doesn't syncronize exactly with the mechanical device, the effect is ruined.) You nailed it. Your timing was perfect on pulling the cord every time. One thing that confuses my logical mind happens at the beginning and at the end. It seems more logical to me to start the effect with one tassle down and maybe put the sticks away with one tassle down.)

Both my wife and I liked how you made the cups and balls your own effect. You seemed very relaxed doing it. The balls that you use in the cups and balls routine seem a too similar in color to the cups and your hands, so that I couldn't always follow whether they vanished or not. I suggest a contrast color.

You were caught looking at your set list a few times.

I liked how you involved the audience at the beginning of the vanishing bandana with a magicians oath. It may have seemed more natural if you yourself put the CD in the CD player.

The eggbag, as I remember was great. The only thing that I could suggest was maybe wear a shirt that wasn't black, as from where we were sitting in the back, I couldn't see the bag easily.

I liked the additions that you made to the rings routine. It flowed better than Tom's routine.

The floating card played well, I didn't even notice the mercury fold as I was caught in the moment.

The six card repeat was a nice addition to your repertoire.

I enjoyed seeing that sense of wonder on the faces of the audience as you performed.

I only wish I had the confidence to perform like that."

My response:

Thank you my friend for taking the time and effort to critique my show. I really appreciate your thoughts.
I especially like the idea of using a different set of balls for the cups and balls, I have been thinking the same things. Been thinking about a blue set of balls.
The black shirt and the egg bag... Good point, I wear the black shirt mostly because I am planning on the floating card trick, and it helps hide the black wand for a further distance to the sides...Maybe I should use the egg bag you bought for me? I will think about it! (Dobson's)

I used to have one cord wrapped around the Chinese stick and open that way, as to your thoughts on that... and I used to re wrap it around one stick at the end as well. I finally decided to heck with it because it is magic, and the sticks I use cost a lot and the cord seemed to get kinks in it because I would leave it wrapped for many weeks between shows as I do not perform often enough... however, if I was smart... I would just wrap it around one of the sticks just prior to performance, and after the show, go ahead and unwrap it and let it go back into the stick.
Thank you for making me ponder that, this is what critique should do! I have not liked that going into it and coming out of it either.

The mercury fold I try to do when I stick my tongue out when I say "have you ever seen slight of tongue?" Dan Harlan told me this is the off beat time to do it, everyone is laughing at my funny face with my tongue sticking out, guess Dan was right! :)

I tried something new with the C.D. during the Vanishing Bandanna trick. I actually made another copy of the c.d. and we had it primed in the c.d. player to try to minimize lapse of time between getting it out of the box, putting it in the c.d. player and the time it actually plays.
The idea was to hand the c.d. to someone, in this case my son, and simply have him mime the actions of putting it into the player.
Actually I like this idea, but we hadn't rehearsed it, in fact, Ryan was brought in to the idea late. It was going to be my nephew Lionel who put the c.d. in and do all that, but we realized from where he was filming, it wouldn't look very well choreographed. So we opted fro Ryan and we muffed it up.
Thanks for noticing! Haha.
The best laid plans of mice and men!

All I can tell you about getting comfortable is to perform, perform, perform!
Take any and all gigs and opportunities to show magic.
I did, and still do this.
I am uncomfortable everytime I get a walk around gig, but I force myself to take them and do them, once you start rolling... it's all good!

Tim