The Box Jumping Magician: A New Season

Yesterday, Tuesday morning I woke up around 10:15 and that was simply magical. Wanna know why? Because the past couple of months on Tuesdays at that time I'd be doing last minute preps/stress before Pure Magic started. Guys, 10:30 doesn't seem that early in the morning but let me tell you, it is!

We've done lots of early shows over the years with libraries and private performances but those weren't ever illusion shows. And usually when we did those "briefcase shows" we would go to bed early the night before.

In case you haven't heard, we're now doing The Carolina Opry shows 3-4 nights a week on top of our Pure Magic and Thunder & Light performances and we're loving it! But getting home late from a show to get up super early to do a magic show has been making it complicated. Luckily though the 10:30 AM shows are done at the moment until September. We actually have a few weeks off from Pure Magic and Thunder & Light right now until those kick in as afternoon shows so that's awesome.

Photo by Jordan Watkins

We've decided to take this time off to work on some new material. We're actually getting a new illusion this coming Monday and we're super excited about it! It will actually be thrown in a lot quicker than we normally put in a new illusion because we're planning to put it in Thunder & Light where we'll be redoing all of our material in that show before it starts back again next month.

This year's Pure Magic was a really new show for us. We had some brand new illusions to premiere and some illusions and effects that haven't been on the big stage yet but had plenty of testing time from smaller shows. And I'm sure most of you have gathered by now we're pretty secretive when it comes to new illusions, even after they have been testing a little bit. But if you do want to see stuff first, usually my personal Instagram is the first place it's posted so always be on the lookout there! @mrswagstermagic

Photo by Jordan Watkins

That was the first place we posted photos of our newer illusion routines for this year such as broom suspension (which has definitely become a new show favorite) our new regular season version of twister (we'd only done Christmas before) and our newest illusion which has been interlude.

Photo by Katie Shuler

Every time we get a new illusion I gain so much respect for my fellow peers in magic. Interlude literally kicked our butts when we got it a couple of months ago. The bruises and pain I experienced from it was like nothing I'd ever done before. But it has turned out to be hands down one of my favorites in our show and I wouldn't trade those rehearsals for anything. Now it doesn't bruise me anymore it just likes to rip my tights or like a few weeks ago it literally tried to eat my shoe.

It's been our edgiest routine yet, which definitely made it scary to perform for the first time. We are in the bible belt after all and people are very vocal these days if something offends them but thus far it's been all positive response *knocks on wood desk in front of me* But we tried to make it a part of our love story in the course of the show we currently have running and I think it's coming across that way.

Photo by Katie Shuler

With that being said about new illusions, this newest one we get next week will be the first time we've gotten an illusion before we've really prepared for it. We usually find a song, pick the illusion to go with it and then choreograph the illusion long before we get it. This time we're going a little backwards. We have no idea on the music and regardless of what Brandon is trying to tell everyone his current selections are horrible and I won't make you guys suffer like that haha. I'm interested to see how well this goes considering it's premiere is June 28th. So the stress begins! Other than that for our break we'll just be getting ready some other new pieces for that show as well. We're doing my first instant appearance and we can't wait to see the reactions that will receive.

Also we're getting a little more footage later this week from this season and we'll officially be working on the new promo for Pure Magic that will have clips of all our new pieces we can share with you guys! Here's last year's in case you guys missed it...

Pure Magic Promo

While you're on our Youtube channel check out some of latest Behind The Scenes videos, we've been sharing some fun stuff lately! We had a super cool gig last week we shared on there!

And if you haven't seen it on my facebook, I did a photoshoot with the amazing Nateographer again and he captured this incredible shot that I'm planning to work into the top and logo of this blog. Thanks Nate for such an awesome photo!