David Blaine brings his magic to Abu Dhabi.

Gulf News

Superstar Magician David Blaine does a little magic and talks about his craft ahead of the first stop on his tour in Abu Dhabi. Daily headlines from the UAE and around the world brought to you by Gulf News. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv

Transcript

00:00Choose any one that you want.

00:09Who shuffled these?

00:10You did.

00:11I shuffled them.

00:12Okay, so take one out.

00:13Doesn't matter.

00:14Doesn't matter?

00:15Nope.

00:16Just take one that you want.

00:17The two of diamonds?

00:18Yeah.

00:19Are you sure?

00:20You can change if you're not sure.

00:21It was one I wanted, but no, I want this one.

00:22Okay.

00:23Well, that's good.

00:24That's fine.

00:25So sign it.

00:26Sign it.

00:27Yeah, yeah.

00:28Put a signature on it.

00:30Great.

00:31Okay.

00:32That's good.

00:33I'm shaking.

00:34Now, hold on.

00:35Now, to make sure I don't cheat, can you hold my wrist?

00:38You can hold it.

00:39Yeah.

00:40All right.

00:41See, now I can't do any sleight of hand.

00:42Okay.

00:43So I take your card and I place it, give or take, about middle, okay?

00:48Name a suit other than the suit of your card to eliminate.

00:51So not diamonds.

00:52Hearts.

00:53Hearts?

00:54Yeah.

00:55Okay, so look.

00:56See how it's a deck?

00:58See how I make the cards start to just disappear?

01:01See how the whole deck starts to vanish?

01:03You're not bringing me back.

01:04See, everything disappears except for hearts, because that's what you thought of, of course,

01:08the card that you signed.

01:09Oh, my God.

01:10I don't know.

01:11You can keep the...

01:12Are you kidding me?

01:13David, thank you very much for joining us for an interview.

01:14My pleasure.

01:15First off, is it...

01:16Can I ask to start off with, is this the first time in the UAE, or have you had a sneaky

01:17visit before?

01:18Well, I've been to Dubai before, but this is my first time in Abu Dhabi.

01:28And is it your first time performing here?

01:30It is.

01:31Well, I mean, in Dubai, I would, you know, do what I do, which is just close-up stuff,

01:34but this is my first time performing a live theater show, and it's the beginning of my

01:40actual tour.

01:42So this is the very beginning of something that I've been dreaming about doing for over

01:4720 years.

01:48And in this show, I'm doing back-to-back endurance feats, so it's pretty difficult.

01:52So I've been training for the last couple of months as hard as I...

01:56Fully prepared for it.

01:57Trying to.

01:58Not fully prepared, but trying to get prepared.

01:59It shows.

02:00Behave yourself.

02:01Sorry.

02:02Oh, my goodness.

02:03Stage or street?

02:04Well, this is a combination of the two.

02:06So this is a chance to do close-up magic and street magic-type improvisational stuff, but

02:13as well as stage magic, which is endurance pieces put onto a theater show.

02:19There is some classic type of illusion stuff, which is new for me to do, which is also exciting,

02:26but I think this has a combination of that street feel combined with physical death-defying

02:31challenges.

02:33So it's a combination of everything I've ever worked on in my life.

02:36And do you have a preference?

02:38Which one do you prefer?

02:39If you had to choose one?

02:41Well, I've done the street magic thing for so long, this is a new challenge, so it's

02:46exciting because I haven't done this before.

02:49And I think it's always good to try to recreate what you're doing.

02:52So trying to reinvent as much as you can, otherwise you become lackadaisical and everything

02:57that you do becomes repetitious, even if you're learning new stuff in the same field.

03:02So this is a whole new learning curve for me, and it's exciting because of that.

03:06Just for instance, your ice one.

03:08Did you think, right, I want to do something where I'm encased in ice, and then work the

03:11trick backwards?

03:12That's how I did that one, but they're all different.

03:14But with the ice, I was on an airplane coming back from Jamaica, and it was really hot in

03:20Jamaica, and I started thinking about just a piece of ice with something in the middle

03:27of it.

03:28So that was the beginning of the idea, then how do you get there?

03:30So then I started, that was the original idea, then I started working with an ice sculptor,

03:35and we found out that I couldn't press it, so I needed a little bit of space, and that

03:39had an igloo effect, so it made it possible.

03:41But it was the most difficult one that I've ever done, is the ice specifically.

03:46Anything in particular that's ever gone wrong?

03:48Have you ever been seriously hurt by, because we know that you lost 25 kilos in one of your...

03:5321 point something.

03:54Yeah, I think it was like 56 pounds, what's that, four stone?

03:58That was, that I went into organ failure with, so that was more difficult than I thought.

04:04I just do.

04:05But I think it was to be expected, I just didn't know that that would be the actual

04:08outcome, but I recovered.

04:11So I think all of them have things that go wrong, but they're expected, so you anticipate

04:18the outcome.

04:20And you're left with one card, correct?

04:23One card that we started from before, against your heart.

04:28Yeah.

04:29Let me see it.

04:30You want to see it?

04:31Yeah.

04:32Okay.

04:34Okay, that is geeky as, because we just randomly picked those cards in the car.

04:42How did you even see it?

04:44That is just, that is really weird.

04:48That's the next one then.

04:49Oh my goodness.

04:50That's my way of seeing all the questions ahead of time.

Category

Transcript

Recommended