The traditional advice that Dee Christopher gives beginners is Practice, Practice Practice. But that’s not really the best advice. Practice is vital, and it’s the first step to better magic, but it’s only one part of the process for improving your magic tricks. A better line would be:Practice, Practice, Perform.
Regardless of the advice that many magic books and teachers will tell you, every secret to performing a magic trick isn’t given to you in magic books and videos. They teach the mechanics and touch on a particular performers style for presenting the magic trick, but that’s only a small part of the magic secret.
A magic book or DVD can never give you the whole story because magic happens LIVE, and live events are not predictable. There is no set pattern for how a spectator will interact with you, or how you will influence and engage an audience. There are too many variables to ever be predictable.
In the magic tricks performed by Dee Christopher, the lack of a set pattern in the presentation of a magic trick is even more evident. His chosen branch of magic is mind reading and mental powers demonstrated to the public. By its nature, mentalism is about interaction.
Dee Christopher can’t follow a simple recipe as the magic is created in the communication between the mentalist and the spectator. Dee Christopher understands this completely. He urges you to perform live as much as possible as that’s the secret of professional magicians. They practice the method to performance standard, but the real schooling happens when the magic tricks are shown to the public and audience tested.
A few other important elements, that are taught to our students, is to:
– Practice until confident and then perform.
– Focus on a few tricks.
Performing for the public is so important. Often I see beginner magicians getting excited about lots of new tricks and performing them all right away for people they know. It is better to practice a few favourites extensively and then perform it extensively, for people they have never met before.
When performing for strangers, there is more of an obligation to present as it is supposed to be presented. You also become accustomed to different reactions and more unpredictable ways that spectators will interact with you.