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Champions of Magic: Jade wins over fans in male-dominated industry..

Champions of Magic: Jade wins over fans in male-dominated industry..

“My first outfit was a tuxedo. Because that’s what all the guys were wearing,” says Jade, headliner at the upcoming Champions of Magic show in San Francisco. It didn’t take long before she realized she could carve her own trail in an industry largely dominated by men. “Wait a minute, I thought, … I can wear a dress, or whatever I want. I’m a woman!” In 1990 she won the “International Brotherhood of Magicians’ Magic Competition.” Over the next two decades Jade would rise to the top, becoming a globally recognized personality. Employing an act featuring stunning costumes — many traditional Chinese gowns such as qipaos (cheongsams) and dragon robes — whimsical and inspiring music, and tricks that emphasized the use of the entire stage, and even the audience, Jade soon found herself with a loyal following. Many of those were young girls. “They weren’t many female mentors in magic at the time,” she notes. Then came the invitation… … to perform for the royal family of Monaco. Read more..
http://www.starkinsider.com/2015/07/champions-of-magic-jade-video-interview-san-francisco.html?utm_content=bufferf0ec8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Sky News magician ‘videobomb’ was PR stunt in effort to get TV deal..

Sky News magician ‘videobomb’ was PR stunt in effort to get TV deal..

Reporter Ashish Joshi allowed Young and Strange to film ‘shrinking man’ illusion behind him to help them land TV show …

A clip showing a “shrinking man” illusion being performed on Westminster Green behind Sky reporter Ashish Joshi apparently during a live broadcast has been viewed more than 180,000 times on YouTube after going viral on social media.

But it emerged on Friday that the clip was staged, and was not part of a live Sky News broadcast. Acting independently of his employers, Joshi allowed the magicians to film the stunt outside parliament. Graphics closely mirroring the channel’s text and branding were added afterwards. Read more and watch the video..  http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/24/sky-news-magician-videobomb-fake-broadcast-young-strange

‘Penn & Teller: Fool Us’ fan recap: Magic? There’s an app for that..

‘Penn & Teller: Fool Us’ fan recap: Magic? There’s an app for that..

By Kayleigh Roberts for Entertainment Weekly..

Full disclosure: I’m a huge fan of Penn and Teller. I’ve seen them live in Vegas. I loved their Showtime series. Heck, I was even a fan of Penn Jillette’s guest-star stint on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I watched the first season of Penn & Teller: Fool Us on YouTube and was super-psyched when I heard that The CW had picked it up for a second season.

The show’s premise and structure, in case you’re not familiar, is as follows: Professional magicians take the stage to perform their best illusions for Penn and Teller. If P&T know how the trick is done, they give hints that let the magician know they know without giving away the magic to the audience. If they don’t know how the trick was pulled off, the magician(s) in question win the chance to perform as part of Penn & Teller’s long-running and hugely popular Vegas show—obviously, a major opportunity for any magician. Viewers are treated to a handful of hopefuls as they look to bamboozle P&T;  then, at the end of each episode, the judges perform one of their famous and world-class illusions, which is always a treat.

Here are this week’s hopeful foolers’ tricks, ranked from meh to magical:

http://community.ew.com/2015/07/21/penn-teller-fool-us-shoot-to-kill/

‘We’re more than just scantily clad assistants’: meet the woman making magic’s glass ceiling disappear..

‘We’re more than just scantily clad assistants’: meet the woman making magic’s glass ceiling disappear..

There is a line in Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay that seems to sum up our centuries-old love affair with magic: “The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam,” he writes. “That what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash.”

Indeed, while entertainment trends have come and gone (ostrich racing, anyone?), our appetite to be astonished by illusions, alchemy and mind tricks is insatiable. Long before David Blaine was starving himself in a plastic box, the Egyptians and Romans were disappearing balls beneath cups – and Simon the Sorcerer cornered the market in levitation more than 2000 years before Dynamo came along.

While it is an entertainment built on defying the impossible, however, magic has proved wholly inadequate at escaping one particularly archaic set of shackles. Go through any roll call of the magical greats, from Harry Houdini and the Great Lafayette to Penn & Teller and Derren Brown, and the lack of women is stark. They haven’t been totally absent – they consistently appear as scantily clad assistants, holding hoops of fire or being sawn in half as some sort of living prop – but they have rarely been the ones performing the illusion. Read more…   http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jul/20/katherine-mills-magician-women-magic