Surprisingly the opening went extremely well. I definitely lost sleep the night before after having a rough dress rehearsal earlier that day. It's currently the same show we did last year but having not performed it since October, especially with some physically demanding illusions in the show, it was nerve-racking.
We actually received two standing ovations during the show and most things went off without a hitch. I rarely think there are such things as a perfect show. Not saying it doesn't happen, because it can, just not all the time. Performers who claim to have a perfect show every time obviously don't have very high standards. There's no reason to improve if everything is always "perfect".
While doing meet and greet in the lobby after the show as we always do, we had the opportunity to get to know a group of high schoolers from a theatrical school who came to see us. They were super sweet supportive kids but because they were performers as well they were quite intuitive. One girl came up to tell us how much she loved that we incorporated the story of us into our show.
This version of our show with that "story" was created last March and not one person has mentioned it to us because it is so subtle, it was really more for us. I knew of the two parts back to back that probably seemed story driven but realized another after doing some thinking.
Now I always have to debate on here about whether or not to use the names of illusions and effects, I know it's mostly magi that read my blogs but muggles do too and I don't want anyone looking up secrets just because they know the name of something.
One of our oldest illusions (pictured below) is a rather sensual routine for us. While it used to have some weird danger princess ritual story thing, now it's just more of a back and forth in my decision. It's all tension and me wondering if I want to be with Brandon or not (which then I go in a box and he stabs me with swords... so obvious love story) but still at the end I chose him. Actually now that I think about it, yes, that is exactly our love story. I choose him everyday even though he tries to stab me with swords.
A little later in the show Brandon performs a classic effect of magic but of course with his own personal twist on it. It's no secret in his routine that the ball is meant to be the moon and is inspired by the classic movie "It's A Wonderful Life". So in his demonstration of his love for me, Brandon literally gives me the moon and goes down on one knee. So onto engagement.
The show flows right into the next illusion. One of our newest and hands down the edgiest. Still every time right before we go to perform this one I slightly panic that between the music, choreography, and insinuations, it might be too much. I crawl through his body. It's our raw togetherness piece. But I think because we developed such a passionate but romantic piece for us, the audience always loves it. It was a hard routine to get in the right mindset for and it was one we mostly created ourselves just to make sure that it was purely our emotions involved in it's piecing together. At least that's how I thought it through, I may have overthought it, but it was important to me that way.
As for the current show, in the midst of everything else, that's as much of our story in magic as you get. Of course all of our routines are us but I mean the ones specifically involving our love story. There's a new piece we are creating to add in for this season's show that I hope will be amazing. I will get to tell the audience my side of the story.
I was actually going to tell you about some of it on here, but realizing now how long this entry is, I'll do that in another posting. Sometimes that happens when writing, I came here to get one point across but my heart lead me in another direction.
With this new routine I'm really excited to share this realization and connection to a character that's been on my heart for a little over a year now and Brandon thought of the perfect effect to go along with it... Which we are actually about to rehearse right now so I'll finish this here. We can't wait to share this piece of magic with everyone.
