whatweird.com

For “Holiday Magic,” Hirata will bring together a number of elements to create that wonder. Silverman has a “magical teleportation device,” Fisher is performing the dark art of juggling, Cagigal will work his tricks and Hirata anchors the show with his unique act, which takes dreams - “in both the sense of fantastical visions and as wants and desires” - as its subtext.

“I’ll be doing several effects. Essentially I’m manipulating light,” Hirata says, speaking carefully so as not to reveal too much of the show. “For instance, in a rather playful way going from the idea of dreams to nightmare, essentially I share an image, nothing too scary, from a nightmare and then show how we magically create nightmares with light, thereby conquering them.” (As you can tell, magic tricks are hard to describe.)

Hirata has been performing magic since his childhood. He is a full-time magician. While he says that there are some great young performers working “street magic” tricks (think Criss Angel), his style is best suited to longer-form theater.

“My technology and techniques are traditional, but my approach is original,” he says. “I take a lot of inspiration from painting. Magic juggles a lot of elements, and one is the fantasy element.

I know a lot of you will say I’m silly for even thinking this… but indulge me. What if magicians like Hirata really do have special powers? And what if the “magician act” is simply an “act”? Maybe all magicians are capable of things like teleporting or jumping and they protect themselves and their “talent” by pretending it is not real? Okay, maybe not all magicians, but what if a few do possess abilities that the rest of us would say were “weird”?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Random, Teleportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.