Tag Archive for: Washington DC Magic Show

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Rave Reviews For Washington Magic on Yelp

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2019 was a great year for Washington Magic! We have made out mark on the DC night life and here’s what people are saying on Yelp about our shows:

“Elegant evening of magic and wine!
The Arts Club of Washington is a hidden gem containing another hidden gem, the roughly-monthly Washington Magic show. Run by high/powered political consultant David Morey and retired DC restauranteur Savino Racine, the entire evening is an enchanting experience.

You’ll want to arrive early for drinks: the Club provides an excellent rotation of wines and cocktails. Drink in hand, enjoy the close-up magic for the 30 minutes before the show. Bring your drink with you into the salon, where the stage and sound system make every seat a good one.

Be prepared for visually stunning magic and mysterious mind-reading, served with lots of audience interaction and humor. The intimate Arts Club space is ideal for this type of entertainment; it feels like stepping back into a more elegant and refined time.

Our audience was a mix of A-list Washington power couples and young people, who were engaged in the show and enthusiastic afterwards. With many good restaurants nearby, Washington Magic makes a great date night, special occasion evening, or attraction for out-of-town guests. With fewer than 100 seats, this may soon become the toughest ticket to get in DC.

There are several inexpensive parking garages nearby, and the Arts Club is only two blocks from the Farragut West Metro (Red Line).”

— Eric H.

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Top 5 Unique Luxury Dates in DC

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  1. Washington Magic
    Enjoy a magical evening of romance, comedy and magic tricks. This show honors the Victorian era tradition of stage and parlor as these magicians perform impossible mind reading, classical magic tricks and wild stunts in the outrageously elegant Arts Club of Washington.

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The Eighth Strategy: Overcome And Prevail

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THE EIGHTH STRATEGY: OVERCOME AND PREVAIL
Never, never, never give up.
—Winston Churchill

Creating Business MagicScene: This really happened. Lance Burton achieved the accolade reserved for the greatest of Las Vegas headliners: his own stage in his own theater. The first American to win the Gold Medal awarded by the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques—the “Olympics of Magic”—in 1982, Burton is performing on his stage in his theater at the Monte Carlo Hotel when, suddenly, one of his comely assistants is menaced by what can only be described as a man-monster. 

The masked being brandishes a sword—prompting Burton to interrupt his show, grab his own trusty blade, and engage in an apparently impromptu Errol Flynn-style duel. There is thrusting, parrying, and the discordant clash of real steel against real steel. Clearly, Burton is battling for his theatrical life, conducting a brave fighting retreat up a staircase and taking his stand at the top.

“What do you want?” he demands of the apparition. “Why are you here?” 

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The Seventh Strategy: Grab The Dialogue

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THE SEVENTH STRATEGY: GRAB THE DIALOGUE

—Whoever plays offense first wins.

 —Bill Clinton

Creating Business MagicScene: This really happened. Like most sons, Harry Blackstone, Jr. imagines following in his father’s footsteps. Three decades before, the father, Harry Blackstone, Sr., made a borrowed handkerchief dance impossibly and mischievously alongside his audience’s imagination. 

Now, it’s 1987. The son enters the stage to reach for a lightbulb in a lamp held by his lovely wife. It’s hot. He waits, cooling, and now almost magically removes the still-lite bulb and admits: 

“Of course, it’s impossible … that’s why we do it.” 

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The Sixth Strategy: Redirect Your Audience

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THE SIXTH STRATEGY: REDIRECT YOUR AUDIENCE

Start the fire in the east; attack in the west.
—Sun Tzu

Creating Business MagicScene: This really happened. 

Tony Slydini, born Quintino Marucci in Italy in 1900, learned the rudiments of magic from his amateur magician father. The boy was never much interested in grand props and great stages, but focused instead on the proscenium within his own mind. Early on, he mastered a sleight of hand technique founded on precise timing and so-called misdirection. In fact, it was direction that Slydini practiced, honed, and perfected, creating a style of close-up magic that was entirely new. 

Traditional effects relied on theatrical conventions, including a certain distance between the magician and the audience. Traditional magicians, accordingly, developed a repertoire of grand, if often stagey, gestures. Not Slydini. His magic invited close inspection. It never sought to evade reality, but to embrace it. Nor did he create about himself a phony aura of wizardly remoteness from his audience. Instead, he welcomed them, inviting them to move in closer and closer. He eschewed rigidly set programs, in which the scale of effects typically rises in a crescendo of you-ain’t-seen-nuthin’-yet showmanship. Instead, he engaged with his audience, apparently following their lead while directing them to inspire the direction of his show. 

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The Fifth Strategy: Cheat Preemptively

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THE FIFTH STRATEGY: CHEAT PREEMPTIVELY

“Losers react, leaders anticipate.”

 —Tony Robbins

Creating Business MagicScene: Recall the story of Max Malini, told in the introduction. It really happened. Back in the 1920s, Malini, a world-famous magician especially renowned for his “spontaneous” close-up magic, stunned a U.S. senator, who asked him, at a formal dinner party, to “do a trick.”

Protesting that he is completely unprepared, Malini at last gives in to the repeated entreaties of the senator and his entourage. He asks if anyone happens to have a deck of cards. No one does, of course, but—fortunately—the magician carries a deck. He withdraws it from his pocket, shuffles it, then “forces” a card on the senator’s wife. When Malini then asks her to return it to the deck, the card turns up missing. Visibly annoyed, Malini half apologizes. “This is very unusual,” he protests.

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The Fourth Strategy: Disorganize Innovation

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THE FOURTH STRATEGY: DISORGANIZE INNOVATION

“There’s something about the center of any bureaucracy— it’s as if the water tastes different there….”
—Robert Shapiro

Creating Business MagicScene: This really happened. We are in the suburban Las Vegas home of Jeff McBride, one of the best magicians in the world today. Gathered here are some of the other top American magicians, taking a five-day Master Class sponsored by the world’s most famous magic school. In the desert heat, this select group comes together to hear lectures, try out new material, and endure more-or-less polite critiques. Most of all, they create new ideas in a professional magicians’ equivalent of the experimental “Skunk Works” that legendary aircraft designer Kelly Johnson led for Lockheed—where he and his crew developed the likes of WWII’s war-winning P-38 Lightning fighter, the Cold War’s U-2 spy plane, and the SR-71 Blackbird, still the fastest aircraft ever built. Or think of it as akin to Steve Jobs’ famed “Mac Group,” set up in a Cupertino, California, strip mall, physically separate from official Apple HQ and topped by a Jolly Roger pirate flag. It was the perfect place to imagine and build a computer that shifted the PC paradigm. 

Today, imaginations are fired up inside an unassuming desert home, the very environment in which McBride synthesized the shamanistic roots of magic to create a totally new effect: The Water Bowl Illusion. (Ultimately, on September 7, 2017, this is the effect that will fool Penn & Teller on their Fool Us television show.) 

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