dgmagic - UK magic blog by magician Dan Gifford

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic, hence the lack of posts.

Last week I presented my lecture ‘High Impact Magic’ at the British Magical Society in Birmingham. The pressure was on a bit as it was the first lecture of the current president’s tenure, but it went well and was very well received by the members.
One great aspect of lecturing is meeting other magicians (in fact, this is one of the reasons I do it) and I met a couple of guys with very interesting ideas.

I’m looking forward to booking in a few more lectures - when I have the time to push it a bit more!

Welcome to the new home of my magic blog, dgmagic.co.uk

Maybe not as intriging a name as ‘PlanetStrange’ but it makes more sense!

Still going to be writing about the same stuff, it’s just the domain name that has changed.

The UK Entertainer Directory is a new site I have set up (with some technical help!) for entertainers and performers to advertise their services. There is a big demand for entertainment at weddings, parties and corporate events, and these days many people go direct to the performer via a website rather than through agents.

Being a magician, I use sites like this to advertise myself but I often find they are complicated, won’t let you link to your website or are too expensive and require subscriptions. Other, more general web directories often don’t have relevant categories or they also list low quality sites that you don’t want to be associated with.

So I thought I’d create my own web directory which only has categories relevant to entertainment, is simple to use and cheap. Best of all, I have control over the sites that are admitted, so I can make sure they are good quality sites.

Entertainers and performers provide a link to their site, a short description of the entertainment service they offer and optional contact information. They can choose to place their listing in a variety of categories, including one for magicians (with sub categories for close-up, cabaret and stage magicians, and illusionists), a massive one for musicians (big because of the number of different styles of music and bands), and ones for more unusual entertainers like drag acts, after dinner speakers and living statues.

From the point of view of people looking to book an entertainer, the site is pretty easy to use. All the categories are listed on the front page, so users can click on them to browse whatever type of performer they are after. There is also a search function for finding specific listings and an option to find entertainers in a particular region.

The site is gradually filling up with listings and gradually getting more and more visitors. I’m hoping it will prove to be a useful resource for entertainers and bookers alike.

A couple of weeks ago, I had great pleasure in seeing the lecture of Jim Pace at the Leicester Magic Circle.

Jim is an experienced close-up magician from the US who was touring the UK with his lecture, leading up to the Blackpool convention last weekend.

He demonstrated a number of great effects obviously born from experience in real world situations. In particular, there was a great effect where he borrows a napkin from a table and produces a drink from beneath it. Hmmm, so what? Well the drink belongs to one of the people at the table!

As a bonus, we were also introduced to Dennis Friebe, a young magician who is helping Jim out on his lecture tour. Dennis showed us some of his ideas, which were very well thought out and effective.

You can visit Jim Pace’s website at www.jimpacemagic.com (he sells some great items) and Dennis Friebe’s site at: www.dennisfriebe.com.

At the weekend, I was working at a restaurant and performing Crazy Man’s Handcuffs, an effect where elastic bands apparently melt through each other.

While talking to the people at the table, it emerged that they had seen another magician perform a magic trick with elastic bands a couple of weeks before. From their description, and reading between the lines a little, it was exactly the same trick. However, the audience saw my version as something different.

Fortunately, the other magician and myself have each developed our own angle and presentation for a pretty standard effect. Even though the spectators actually saw the same thing happening, the presentation and routines made it seem different.

Unfortunately, a lot of magicians don’t do this. Too many perform effects exactly as described in the instructions or exactly like another magician does, which is shame.

You need to add a bit of yourself to what you perform and try to find a unique way of presenting your effects. Otherwise you look just like the last guy.