Dancing Cane - a new design

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Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » January 30th, 2014, 6:06 pm

My friend Andreas Sebring (the Metal writing guy) have just made a new and nice version of the Dancing Cane. Light as a feather (60 gram/2.1 onces) but hard and sturdy as a metal tube.
Check it out!


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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Spellbinder » February 14th, 2014, 7:46 am

It has the same basic flaw as all other dancing canes - the performer never knows when to quit. However, I am surprised that the drummer didn't have "dancing drumsticks." THAT would be original and could stand going on for an extended period of time.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby mrgoat » February 14th, 2014, 8:57 am

Spellbinder wrote:It has the same basic flaw as all other dancing canes - the performer never knows when to quit.


This has an added bonus of the performer being about as graceful as a breeze block!

He should have got a dancer and trained them to use it.

The prop looks great, if you like dancing canes, but that video...oh dear. :(

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Gordon Meyer » February 14th, 2014, 12:38 pm

Does this trick (in general, not this video specifically) actually fool anyone? It seems like it's full name should be: "The Dancing Cane, or Newton's Third Law of Motion Demonstrated."

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 14th, 2014, 1:14 pm

mrgoat wrote:
Spellbinder wrote:It has the same basic flaw as all other dancing canes - the performer never knows when to quit.


This has an added bonus of the performer being about as graceful as a breeze block!

He should have got a dancer and trained them to use it.

The prop looks great, if you like dancing canes, but that video...oh dear. :(

He just goofed around with the first one outside the workshop, directly the varnish had dried. Just meant to show off the design in motion, to show that despite the non-symmetric design, it still doesn't point out the anchor.
I'm pretty sure there will be a "proper" demo made as soon as he's done in the workshop with the first batch. :)

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Spellbinder » February 14th, 2014, 2:44 pm

I still would like to see a dancing drumstick - or even better, a pair of them. I remember a guy who was able to swing around two dancing canes, one with each hand, so it should be possible to do without knocking yourself out.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 14th, 2014, 4:50 pm

It's a beautifully made piece of kit but the dancing cane is dead in the water these days. Go to any music festival / jugglers club / club-kids troup and you'll see them using "dancing" canes doing tricks that would put almost any performer to shame. The dancing cane is now firmly in the same category as Poi twirling & contact juggling - something cool but not "magic" as they know exactly how it works.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Jonathan Pendragon » February 18th, 2014, 3:49 am

I just used Poi techniques in a presentation that was filmed for "Master of Illusion." "Contact juggling"? Perhaps you missed the film "The Illusionist." You seem to relegate a skill set beyond what most magicians can present into a sub set of "it's pretty, but is it magic?" That same argument could be used for card scaling or an manipulative piece consider a flourish. The ability to present objects in unique motion is magical in the right hands. I believe it takes a magician familiar with dance and disciplines like juggling and artistic gymnastics to use such pieces effectively within a performance where it can enhance a performance, or haven't you been watching Jeff McBride for the last 30 years?

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 18th, 2014, 5:58 am

Can it be presented on stage nicely and entertainingly - yes
Is it magic (ie the audience don't know how it's done and it defies the natural laws of physics) - no
Can it be presented in a "magical" way - yes, but that's still not magic and it is essential that as performers we understand what we're doing and the true effect it has on our audience so that we can refine our performances to make them even better. If someone goes on stage and presents a dancing cane believing the audience hasn't worked out it's on a bit of string and clearly attached to the magicians hand then they'll do "the usual" crappy cane routine. By acknowledging its now essentially a piece of juggling equipments a whole world of other tricks and presentations are opened up which celebrate the performers skills and dedication to master a juggling skill; by embracing this the performer presents something more interesting and both he and the audience are in agreement as to what's amazing about this segment. Go see what "club kids" are doing with light-up-floating-sticks at clubs and festivals; it'll blow you out of the water... but that's because they've accepted it as a piece of juggling and played to its strengths not over-milked its weakness's in a futile attempt to convince everyone it's "magic"

Yes, i do consider most manipulation and card flourishing as juggling, because that's how most audiences perceive it. When you start back-palming cards audiences know what you're doing (they might not understand the technicalities but they get the core principle) and they stop appreciating the act as magic and start appreciating it as a technical skill. Again the problem comes from magicians who present 10mins of manipulation thinking they are devastating their audience with mind bending magic when actually they audience are a) impressed you can palm so many cards and b) bored that a single skill is being done over and over again.

Can manipulation be presented magically - yes but that's through good routining and storytelling combined with the knowledge that manipulation or flourishes are not automatically inherently magic and so simply presenting them as is simply isn't good enough.

Jeff is a bad example simply because he is the exception - his whole persona and act is that of someone who's traveled to mystical lands and learnt skills, dances and routines that are "mystical" that he has anthologised and now presents to his audience. There is magic in his act but there's also plenty of non-magic, it all contributes as a whole to his persona of a traveler who's learning unusual skills rather than being a pure wizard.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Q. Kumber » February 18th, 2014, 7:18 am

Regardless of one's views on the Dancing Cane as a trick, the new model looks to be exceptionally well made.

And while most magicians do tend to go on too long with the cane and card manipulations, it doesn't mean that audiences don't enjoy or appreciate them.

I've always thought that the dancing cane would work best combined with other cane stunts or manipulations, of which there are many.

Layman comments are always interesting. A cousin of mine once came to one of the British Ring gala shows and we went for a meal afterwards. Talking about the various acts, including manipulators and illusionists, he said,' I admired his skill (and of the illusionist) and I admired the skill of the man who made the boxes."

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 18th, 2014, 8:42 am

Oh absolutely, as i said above i don't want to diminish the craftsmanship of this cane, i KNOW how difficult it is to get this level of detail and curve in to metal - he is truly a craftsman. It's just frustrating that he's created a what is essentially a really really beautiful Betamax VCR :D
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 18th, 2014, 1:40 pm

Tom Moore wrote:Oh absolutely, as i said above i don't want to diminish the craftsmanship of this cane, i KNOW how difficult it is to get this level of detail and curve in to metal - he is truly a craftsman. It's just frustrating that he's created a what is essentially a really really beautiful Betamax VCR :D

The cane is made of very light wood. The only metal is where it screws together and a tiny piece in the bottom for finetuning the balance.

Cycles... A prop can be "dead" and even over-exposed in toy stores... Then someone picks it up, looks at it from a new angle, finds a new technique and a new narrative, and suddenly it is alive again.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby erdnasephile » February 18th, 2014, 3:25 pm

Gordon Meyer wrote:Does this trick (in general, not this video specifically) actually fool anyone? It seems like it's full name should be: "The Dancing Cane, or Newton's Third Law of Motion Demonstrated."


Jerry Andrus made a similar comment during a lecture. He said he felt that the broom suspension was really a demonstration of how a fulcrum works.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Jonathan Townsend » February 18th, 2014, 3:44 pm

Okay, who uses such a thing (aside from some magic shop customers and images of folks from the 1920s)?

Not quite the blind leading the blind ...

http://murdocklondon.wordpress.com/2008 ... ar-a-cane/
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Curtis Kam » February 18th, 2014, 4:34 pm

I like what he has done with the prop. The common black cane is nearly the worst color to be seen on stage, although I suppose it does match the "tuxedo and top hat" ensemble. This cane catches the light, and is easier to see. Its color and design suggest a cane that one might see in the service of someone who needs one, as opposed to the formal walking stick, which, as Jonathan's article points out, is more of an accessory.

So this new cane will be appropriate for different characters, in different situations, and one might even "borrow" this one from an audience member, which makes me want one for that possibility, at least.

It seems to me that there's enough room in our imaginations for this prop, so I'm happy to see it. Yes, if I see another poorly performed dancing cane/broom/golf club/disco lighted stick I'm going to walk onto stage and punch the performer, but I feel that way about all magic performed poorly.

And to be fair about the video--he dances with the cane with apparent glee and shameless enthusiasm. In my book, if your dancing conveys that spirit, you're doing it mostly right.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 18th, 2014, 4:54 pm

Cycles... A prop can be "dead" and even over-exposed in toy stores... Then someone picks it up, looks at it from a new angle, finds a new technique and a new narrative, and suddenly it is alive again.


It's an argument i've heard before but i can't think of any trick that has crossed over to the non-magic world and then successfully crossed back other than thanks to the passing of several generations so that the knowledge literally dies out.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 18th, 2014, 5:12 pm

Tom Moore wrote:It's an argument i've heard before but i can't think of any trick that has crossed over to the non-magic world and then successfully crossed back other than thanks to the passing of several generations so that the knowledge literally dies out.

Hydrophobic sand, linking rings, thumbtip, himber ring and lots of other items have been well exposed among the public...

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 18th, 2014, 6:34 pm

Hydrophobic sands is still a widely known "kids toy" in this country - any magician who presents it gets comments to that effect.
Linking rings never "crossed over" - the method might be widely known/imagined but its never been a prop that has been adopted and used widely by some other sector and then been claimed back by magicians
Likewise the thumbtip.
Himber Ring - completely the wrong example; a product invented by specialists in the lay world, adopted by magicians and largely stayed on the magic side ever since, however if you show a himber ring to jewelry makers they'll spot it straight away.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby erdnasephile » February 18th, 2014, 6:50 pm

Perhaps another item bearing Himber's name might be a future example?

As Seen on TV...

Image

but despite this, I think the prop can still be used to fool laymen if handled properly. Scotty York has published some good theory on this.
Last edited by erdnasephile on February 18th, 2014, 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 18th, 2014, 7:33 pm

Tom Moore wrote:Hydrophobic sands is still a widely known "kids toy" in this country - any magician who presents it gets comments to that effect.
Linking rings never "crossed over" - the method might be widely known/imagined but its never been a prop that has been adopted and used widely by some other sector and then been claimed back by magicians
Likewise the thumbtip.
Himber Ring - completely the wrong example; a product invented by specialists in the lay world, adopted by magicians and largely stayed on the magic side ever since, however if you show a himber ring to jewelry makers they'll spot it straight away.

With the Himber ring - I meant when the stooge method have been done for so performances under so many years in a small country, that almost every single person in that country knows about it.

Oh well - You've decided that some items are dead, and no matter what kind of counter example that can be found, you'll invent a reason why that particular counter example isn't valid. So, to save some time, I'll cede this point and will alert everyone that Tom Moore have decided that no magician in the world is allowed to even think about experimenting with this piece ever.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Bill Mullins » February 18th, 2014, 8:34 pm

While I agree with the theoretical possibility that a clever magician can breathe new life into a dead prop, some props are more dead than others. Swinging a stick around on a string is one of them.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Spellbinder » February 18th, 2014, 8:39 pm

There's more than one way to swing a stick. Keep that in mind if anyone is taking my idea for animating drumsticks seriously.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Jonathan Townsend » February 18th, 2014, 8:43 pm

If you do almost anything well enough it will fly as a method.

Same for the guy who's so good that they can read a phone book and keep the audience entertained.

I have yet to see the dancing cane done well enough that i forgot about the method and was watching the magic. When the arc of motion identifies a fixed radius and center ... magic becomes physics.

Kudos for the engineering work. Making a routine using that prop seem magical is its own challenge.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 18th, 2014, 9:29 pm

Jonathan Townsend wrote:Making a routine using that prop seem magical is its own challenge.

Exactly. Just because no one have done it yet does not necessarily mean that it can't be done.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Bill Mullins » February 18th, 2014, 9:47 pm

But after seeing dozens of failed attempts to make it look magical, at some point it becomes reasonable to believe that this particular prop will never again be anything other than a stick on a string.

I'd like to be proven wrong on this, but you'll have to show me, rather than keep telling me.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 18th, 2014, 11:25 pm

Bill Mullins wrote:But after seeing dozens of failed attempts to make it look magical, at some point it becomes reasonable to believe that this particular prop will never again be anything other than a stick on a string.

I'd like to be proven wrong on this, but you'll have to show me, rather than keep telling me.

Any routine that is based on one single method is bound to be bad, that goes for the dancing cane as well as a lot of "modern" effects.

It is so strange, because it is like people are able to perform the real classics for years without learning anything from them.

Borrowing from the tried classics: One solution, of many, is to borrow the cancelling procedure from the Linking rings, and combine it with the pattern structure from the Chinese Sticks, and save the actual dancing part for last at a point when the audience have been convinced that a thread is the least likely method, and that is when you hit them with it. And at that point it should work even for the juggling crowd who by then should think that it is completely unrelated to their "flow-wands".

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Bill Mullins » February 19th, 2014, 12:00 am

Tom Stone wrote:Any routine that is based on one single method is bound to be bad, that goes for the dancing cane as well as a lot of "modern" effects.
No disagreement

It is so strange, because it is like people are able to perform the real classics for years without learning anything from them.
??? Some people do classics well in a classical manner (Johnny Thompson's egg bag), some do them in updated ways such that are no longer "classic" (Whit Hadyn's linking rings), some do classics so the method is painfully obvious.

Some effects, despite being old and performed often, aren't classic (dancing cane).


Borrowing from the tried classics: One solution, of many, is to borrow the cancelling procedure from the Linking rings, and combine it with the pattern structure from the Chinese Sticks, and save the actual dancing part for last at a point when the audience have been convinced that a thread is the least likely method, and that is when you hit them with it. And at that point it should work even for the juggling crowd who by then should think that it is completely unrelated to their "flow-wands".


This sort of thinking may lead to a magical performance of the dancing cane. But since the cane usually suffers from "the method is the effect" problem, finding new and magical ways to use the prop is very difficult. I'm not sure, for example, how the "pattern structure of the Chinese Sticks" can be adapted to the cane, whose raison d'etre is to be suspended/levitated via invisible thread. You can hold it in the air statically, which makes it less obvious that it is "magically" floating, or you can move it around, and it suffers from the physics problems alluded to above.

But it is all just pipe dreams until someone actually does it ("show me, rather than keep telling me"), and it will either stand or fall as a magical effect.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 19th, 2014, 12:34 am

Bill Mullins wrote:This sort of thinking may lead to a magical performance of the dancing cane. But since the cane usually suffers from "the method is the effect" problem, finding new and magical ways to use the prop is very difficult. I'm not sure, for example, how the "pattern structure of the Chinese Sticks" can be adapted to the cane, whose raison d'etre is to be suspended/levitated via invisible thread. You can hold it in the air statically, which makes it less obvious that it is "magically" floating, or you can move it around, and it suffers from the physics problems alluded to above.

But it is all just pipe dreams until someone actually does it ("show me, rather than keep telling me"), and it will either stand or fall as a magical effect.

Don't be stuck in what has been. A coin's raison d'etre is to carry an abstract unit of worth, but it is a whole other set of qualities that emerges in the hands of someone like Curtis Kam. A thing does not have to remain what it is.
It is not the cane that suffers from "the method is the effect" problem, it is the routine that suffers from that problem, or more correctly, the person who makes the routine.

The Chinese Sticks consist of two parts. The first part consist of a series of non-magical, marginally puzzling and almost amusing gags. The second part is when the magic happens, the sticks are separated and there is no connection between them, still they react as if they were connected.
Question is; if only the second part is magical and the first part is mostly non-magical... then why not scrap the first part and go directly onto the second part?
...And the answer is; without the first part, where the spectators are guided into a specific pattern of thoughts, the second part will become crude and transparent. Without being stuck in the "where is the connection?" pattern, the actual method is plain as day and obvious to all.
Transfering this over to the dancing cane - we have something that looks nice but have a method that is plain as day and obvious... hence, that method should not be used until the spectators have been firmly guided into another pattern of thought

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Jonathan Pendragon » February 19th, 2014, 1:34 am

TM
Jeff Mcbride isn't a bad (poor) example, he is a perfect example. You eliminate an entire genre of performance techniques partially because there are so many examples of lousy, overly long and artsy for ass art sake (European phrase that describes pretentious presentations) and then invalidate one performer because he is an exception? "All things in showbiz are good things except boring things." I don't know who said that, but it is one of my favorite quotes. It's Jeff's character that drives the performance (not the magic) and in his universe the arcane skills, in debate, are part of the "ritual" of his magic. Jeff could explain that better than I. We have been friends for 30 years and we have discussed our respective philosophies of magic at length, ad nauseam actually.

Another quote, this one is about the great ballet star, Nijinsky, and his magnificent jete' (leap). "It was not that he leaped higher than others, it was that he came down more slowly." His gravity bound performance appeared magical, even to a critic.

You can't eliminate the performer from the equation, or use only those who bolster your view. I was taught the Dancing Cane by Peter Pit, who developed the dancing appearance having first mastered the anti-gravity techniques. Peter had trained in dance and his ability to move, his sense of style, fashion (with the exception of that ridiculous fur coat) were all part of his persona on stage. As with Jeff, I listened to Peter's philosophy which was very similar to Jeff's: We make things magical, the inanimate does nothing unless we act on it.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 19th, 2014, 3:42 am

...though... it can't hurt to keep an eye on what's beeing done with the flow wands. Some of their long string techniques are interesting.



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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 19th, 2014, 5:04 am

Jonathan
I'm not dismissing Jef at all, simply pointing out that he is the wrong person to reference in this instance precisely because he has developed a character that merges performance art and magic in to one big melting pot; therefor he can perform something that isn't in the slightest bit "deceptive" but because of the framing of his persona (essentially, a guy who does weird slightly ethnic/foreign cool stuff) it fits perfectly in to the context of his show, very little of Jef's overall performance is "magic" - yet his framing and character have evolved to create a character and world where that is entirely appropriate and what he is booked for. The problem comes when other magicians see someone like Jef doing something, misunderstanding the importance of his framing and thus wrongly assume that he gets the response he gets because of the prop/discipline which they then start using themselves without the framing that gives it context.

Again i refer you to my previous comments about magic and magical - something can be one without the other but too many performers get the two mixed up and assume that magical=magic resulting in far too many terrible terrible performances where the magician has deluded himself as to what the audience is experiencing and thus is (inadvertently) focusing on the weakness's of an effect rather than playing to its strengths. It is only by truely understanding precisely what our audiences are actually thinking/experiencing when they watch our performances that we can evolve and improve what we present. In too many cases magicians assume what their audience is thinking and assume wrong!

Oh well - You've decided that some items are dead, and no matter what kind of counter example that can be found, you'll invent a reason why that particular counter example isn't valid. So, to save some time, I'll cede this point and will alert everyone that Tom Moore have decided that no magician in the world is allowed to even think about experimenting with this piece eve

Tom, you can do much better than this....
One of the most essential parts of creativity is taking what already exists, learning why it works (and doesn't) then doing something different to evolve or improve it. As long as people are banging out identical design dancing canes (the example here has some nice cosmetic changes but is essentially identical to every other dancing cane on every other level that's been produced in the last 40 years) and promoting them with demo videos that have all the same moves in then a whole new wave of clones will be produced doing the same old dancing cane and nothing will change. I absolutely encourage people to experiment with this idea (and every other idea) but experiment with something different rather than trying to take an existing effect with no substantial changes and keep performing it the way everyone else does. If you'd done just 1min of research in to me you'd know that i'm all about re-inventing classics and about evolving ideas and techniques constantly to fit specific performers.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Spellbinder » February 19th, 2014, 9:10 am

Here's an idea for you. Make the "cane" the center leg of a magic table. Assemble the table and toss a tablecloth on top- the table lifts off the ground and begins to float around (ask Lossander how that's done!). When you finally get the table to settle down, being inquisitive, you try to figure out what made the table float. You remove the top and try to make it float by itself, but it just drops to the floor. Then you remove the center leg (dancing cane) and pick up the base with the other hand, drop the base and while you are concentrating on the base,the cane does its thing BRIEFLY until you finally catch it. You then rub the cane with a silk handkerchief to "remove the magic from it" and in a few moments you have a dancing handkerchief that finally flies off stage to end the routine. Now the cane becomes just a part of a flying table, each animation/flying having a different method. It is still based on standard principles but none of them go on "forever ad nauseum" until the audience catches on how it is done.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Jonathan Townsend » February 19th, 2014, 9:22 am

@Spellbinder
The context you suggest is nice - though i suspect the spell will be broken when the contrived charm gets pushed into background by base physics.

@JP
It seems to me that for something about a prop or routine used in the performing arts to be objectively or verifiably true it's exactly necessary to remove the performer from the equation. The merits of a script are lost when evaluated from a performance by "that guy who can hold an audience by reading the phone book". Similarly the merits of a trick are lost when evaluated by a performance that's character and context based. That's why we have so many people making a mess of the subjective and personality based methods that get put into our literature (Ramsay Subtlety or JWGrip used as aquitment?) - and so much literature which ignores the personal and subjective which is necessary for their material to be deceptive.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Bill Mullins » February 19th, 2014, 10:43 am

Tom Stone wrote:...though... it can't hurt to keep an eye on what's beeing done with the flow wands. Some of their long string techniques are interesting.




Interesting short video of a pretty girl in a bathing suit dancing with a stick on a string.

But there's nothing the least bit magic about it.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Stone » February 19th, 2014, 11:01 am

Bill Mullins wrote:But there's nothing the least bit magic about it.

?
It's not a magic performance, so the lack of magic should not be surprising.
I posted it because it looks like two of the techniques in the clip could be adapted for our purposes: The wrong hand anchor and the part where she stops moving and let it wrap around her.
Spellbinder is on to something, but I'd stick to the same prop - the transfer of an ability between objects is tricky to make clear.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Spellbinder » February 19th, 2014, 11:10 am

What part of "tricky" do you find difficult for a magician to make clear? Isn't it our business to do "tricky" things and make them seem like magic?
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Bill Mullins » February 19th, 2014, 11:25 am

Tom Stone wrote:
Bill Mullins wrote:But there's nothing the least bit magic about it.

?
It's not a magic performance, so the lack of magic should not be surprising.


And thus it has a great deal in common with the dancing cane as performed by most magicians.

I posted it because it looks like two of the techniques in the clip could be adapted for our purposes: The wrong hand anchor and the part where she stops moving and let it wrap around her.


If a magician were to adapt these techniques, he'd still have a routine which, from the spectator's perspective, devolves into "why can't I see the string?" They might add to the jugglery, or even the artistry, of the routine, but they don't add to the magic, and to the extent that they would encourage the performer to lengthen the routine (because now he has six moves, instead of just four) they would probably weaken the magic.

Less is more with this one.

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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Spellbinder » February 19th, 2014, 11:28 am




Give Turbo the resources of an "Appearing Broom" and David Copperfield's "Flying" apparatus and you'd have a routine that would be the envy of every magician. Notice that Turbo refrains from excessive flying of the broom and that he could probably have used mime to make the whole thing happen without the need for a line.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Tom Moore » February 19th, 2014, 11:33 am

The challenge to overcome in "rehabilitating" the dancing cane is not changing the cane - a cane is itself a common enough object and there's 101 other similar shaped objects that could be swapped in. The problem that needs addressing is to stop it looking like something being twirled on a bit of string. Since the traditional hook-up has been exhaustively tested and no-one's come up with anything (other than brevity of routine, using it mainly as a suspension and little more than a single pass of "flight") that looks like anything other than "on a bit of string" the area that needs attention is finding a new hook-up system (possibly multiple hook-ups) so that a range of different moves could be performed that each disprove the other. Then a routine has to be found that plays to the strengths of the new hook-up methods and which doesn't look exactly like a stick on some string. Finally after all that technical stuff has been sorted out we can start worrying about justifying what the stick-shaped object needs to look like.
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Re: Dancing Cane - a new design

Postby Bill Mullins » February 19th, 2014, 11:53 am

Spellbinder wrote:Give Turbo the resources of an "Appearing Broom" and David Copperfield's "Flying" apparatus and you'd have a routine that would be the envy of every magician. Notice that Turbo refrains from excessive flying of the broom and that he could probably have used mime to make the whole thing happen without the need for a line.


Actual talent and dancing skills trump the prop. See also Fred Astaire and the hat rack.


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