Hello. My name is Dale Salwak. Since 1978 I have had the privilege of directing the Chavez Studio of Magic in southern California. It’s a pleasure to spend this time with you.

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The art of magic, like music and the visual arts and literature, has great power to transform our lives and our culture. It connects peoples from all over the world.

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When someone asks about the Chavez Studio of Magic and what is required to study here, I say, “Only one word - desire.” As young, aspiring magicians, you can go as far as you want to go with this art.

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We all know stories of magicians whose lives were changed for the better because of magic.

How well I remember when as a five-year-old I attended a birthday party and sat amazed as a magician cut and restored a rope, produced a rabbit out of an empty hat, and pulled handkerchiefs from an empty tube. I was excited and filled with curiosity. Something clicked inside me. This was magic - and I wanted to know how to do it.

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Later, as the other children busied themselves with cake and juice and gifts, I stood close to the magician while he packed his props. Perhaps he sensed something in my eagerness, my passion for life, my openness to sort of new

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experience. All I know is that before leaving, he taught me the secret to changing the color of a silk handkerchief from red to blue just by passing my hand over it.

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My parents had a copy of a book that described magic effects. It didn’t explain how they worked. And so my mother and I figured out ways to do the tricks and built them using cardboard and tape and cloth.

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When I was ten years old, I gave my first magic show using the tricks that my mother and I had made. My parents hired me for my own birthday party.

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From there I began to do more shows for parties and other groups. I was very shy and very uncomfortable. But I knew that I loved magic and that I wanted to be a magician. Slowly I grew more confident and I overcame my fear of talking in front of people. The same can happen for you.

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However far you carry your own magic, it will enrich your life and your friends’ and family’s lives in so many ways. Learn all you can, practice and practice before showing your magic to anyone, and always have fun. Magic, like music, keeps alive the child within all of us.

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Proposed Script - Instructional - PART III

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For each effect below, I will demonstrate it first, then explain how to do it. Easy-to-follow, very visual and entertaining, these effects also teach beginning magicians important principles they will use later at an advanced level.

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LEVEL I (beginners in magic)

Cups & Balls
LOCATION: STUDIO, SITTING AT TABLE IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: The performer uses three cups and three small balls. The magician makes the balls appear to pass through the solid bottoms of the cups, jump from cup to cup, disappear from the cup and appear in other places, and vanish from various places and reappear under the cups (sometimes under the same cup), ending with larger balls.

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Sponge Balls
LOCATION: STUDIO, SITTING AT TABLE IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: With a wave of the hand magician vanishes a sponge ball. The magician touches the spectator's hand and the ball appears in his hand. The sponge ball multiplies into two balls in the spectator's hand. This is repeated until four balls have passed to the spectator’s hand one-by-one.

 

Selected Card
LOCATION: STUDIO, SITTING AT TABLE IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: The spectator is asked to divide a deck of cards into five piles, then deal one card on top of each pile. The sixth card he looks at, memorizes, and then mixes in with all of the other cards into one pack. The magician magically discovers the selected card.

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Coin Production
LOCATION: STUDIO, STANDING IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: The magician magically produces five coins from the apparently empty hand, one at a time, and drops each one into a tiny bucket.

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Magic Box
LOCATION: STUDIO, STANDING IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: The magicians introduces a magic box (shown empty) from which he or she produces ribbons or a small handkerchief.

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Money Trick
LOCATION: STUDIO, SITTING IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: The magician folds two paper bills. He places one folded bill inside the other folded bill, pulls and the bill inside the other magically passes through the folded bill.

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Rising Card
LOCATION: STUDIO, SITTING, THEN STANDING IN FRONT OF DARK BLUE CURTAIN

Effect: The magician has a spectator select a card and then loses it in the deck. Magician rests the first finger on top of the deck and as the magician lifts the finger, the spectator's card mysteriously rises out of the deck with it.