Ye Olde Magick Blogge

Because of Michael Ammar’s contributions to magic in this regard, I’m going to be including both his routine and a review of his 2 DVD set on the subject, the Complete Cups and Balls. First, the routine. It’s got a lot of nice stuff going on in it, including that great open load, and the nice executions on the steals for the three ball vanish sequence. It’s an interesting choice to go for three steals in a row — frankly, because I consider the steal to be more of an intuitive solution for how the audience suspects the ball to disappear from the hand, from my vantage point this is a really bold approach to take, and I have to admit I’m somewhat suspicious that Ammar not only knows this, but does it on purpose. Thankfully he does the steals quite well (Sankey once said that nobody does the Williamson strike vanish quite as well as Williamson, and I’m inclined to agree — Williamson tips the work on it in on his Magic Farm DVD, and what he describes as being one of the tells of the vanish is something that Ammar does here, but it’s still a pretty good steal).

There’s also a nice approach to set up the end-game, diminishing the number cups and balls in play, to prepare for the final reveal. The fact that some of this happens early, when there’s still going to be some obvious cup and small ball action to come, I think allows for some pretty good time misdirection. And speaking of final loads, I also had the chance to actually watch Ammar do this live at a magic convention in Busan, and he had also built into the routine the bill-in-lemon trick which evolved out of the climax (including a second phase where the bill disappears again and reappears instantly again inside another lemon).

Finally, if you thought L&L audiences were responsive, you’ve not seen anything yet.

As for the DVD set, here’s my quick review on it…

When it comes to finding tricks to study, one of the virtues that the Cups and Balls offers, more than any other genre in magic, is the fact that so many principles can come into play in just this one trick. When I was tutored by Tyler Erickson on the routine, I was forced to study the following principles: sleight of hand, working one-ahead, misdirection, cover, wand use, motivated action, cancelling methods, multiple phase structuring, progression, feints, pocket management, conditioning actions, tension and relaxation, punctuation, understanding and manipulating audience’s suspicions, working impromptu (and preparing for the obstacles of working impromptu), and understanding the role of the climax… and that’s just off the top of my head. You’re not going to get all that by studying Red Hot Mama.

If this is true, then it’s a monumental task to try to come up with an instructional DVD that would match the richness of the genre. Thankfully, Michael Ammar was equal to that task, as he produced what I consider to be one of his finest teaching products, which is saying something considering how highly regarded his Card and Money-related material is.

First, the good… Michael Ammar really commits himself to the idea of exploring the Cups and Balls completely, from the higher levels of routine construction right down to the nitty-gritties of technique. The contents are extensive. He opens with a talk about the nature of the props, the possibilities for different types of loads, and the importance of the wand. Then, after going through a quick definition of technical terms that are useful for any sleight of hand discussion, he teaches the first routine, a 3-phase penetration sequence with a kicker surprise, before moving on to the fundamentals of ball and cup sleight of hand, including vanishes, loads, and steals. After some presentational bits of business, including cup-only effects, penetration ideas, and dynamic hands-off small ball concealments, he finally introduces us to the concept of routining on a broader scale, beginning with an easy three cup routine which is just a final load sequence away from being serviceable for any working magician, before moving to a fuller routine with vanishes and penetrations, culminating with the student’s first final load handling of a single object. Finally, he does an impromptu routine involving three borrowed tea-cups, grapes serving as small balls, and a climax featuring 3 loads of fruit and/or vegetables — a pretty robust routine that would be worth doing even if one used their own props. All in all, quite a lot of material to absorb… and we’ve only finished the first DVD.

The second DVD opens with more advanced uses of the wands, particularly for steal-based vanishes, including a good instruction of the Dai Vernon wand spin, which Ammar executes quite well. He then talks about how to go about opening the routine so as to start advantageously, working anywhere from one to four balls ahead, including how to open by magically producing the three balls that you’re going to need for the routine. Following this are several beginning sequences, including the one Ammar uses in his own professional routine, before he moves into ten middle phase possibilities, including various penetrations, assemblies, and the notable 2-0-2 sequence. Next, he spends some time talking about dealing with environment considerations, such as whether or not you’re going to be seated or standing, and what opportunities might open up depending upon the sort of cover that your venue might afford you, as well as what you might need to do with your clothing in order to deceptively manage your props. After this, final load technique is covered, including different sequences you can use to get them into place, as well as what to do if you want to use non-standard loads, such as using liquids or live baby animals. There’s also some talk about how to best reveal those final loads — which might unfortunately be considered an afterthought by many, because even though all the dirty work is done by then, from the audience’s point of view, you’ve still got to account for the magic to come.

Finally, we end the DVD set with a very thorough examination of the Dai Vernon cups and balls routine, including a performance by Ammar, a full explanation, and then a bonus television performance by Vernon himself. There’s so much to be said about Vernon’s routine that it couldn’t all fit here, and there’s going to be a day devoted to it later, but needless to say it’s a worthwhile study, complete with vanishes, reappearances, penetration effects, humourous bits of business, an assembly, audience interaction, and his nifty pocket sequence that culminates in four final jumbo productions. One can do so much worse than mastering this routine as a part of their overall cups and balls training. Hell, even if one ended their training by getting that routine down cold, they’d still have something good enough for arguably the 20th century’s most influential magician to do on television.

All in all, it’s a pretty impressive curriculum, so much so that Magic Makers, if their ad copy is to be believed, pretty much lifted the format completely. Even if we disregard Ammar’s and Vernon’s contributions, it’s also a real tour-de-force in terms of the number of magicians whose work gets some representation here, including David Williamson, John Mendoza, Charlie Miller and others, and you can feel Max Malini’s influence throughout. Besides being a reputable teacher, Ammar’s also a very good technician, so he offers a great model for practice.

Additionally, throughout all of this, Bob Read contributes some great insight onto how the cups and balls developed throughout history into its present form. There’s some in-depth talk about how the props evolved, how the performers themselves appeared and presented the trick, and what the environments where they performed in were like. He also includes some great prints to show how artists recorded performances of the trick. These particular sections help give us an idea of how the modern format of the genre compares to (and differs from) the way previous generations performed it, and the historical information should prove particularly interesting to street performers.

As for the not-so-good… well, it’s hard to find a lot of fault with this series. Some people have commented that the Bob Read components aren’t quite what they were hoping for. Personally I believe that a student devoted to learning everything about the genre, particularly one considering busking with the cups and balls, is going to get a lot out of those segments — however, arguably this introduction to the history of the genre only scratches the surface of it, and as such while it might be too much for hopeful cups and balls performers, it might also be too little for magic historians. I do think that the Bob Read elements were valuable, but I’m going to guess that a lot of other people are going to skip that section of the DVDs regularly, and that they have their own rationalizations for doing so that I’ll never be able to argue with.

Otherwise, the only major criticism I have of the DVDs is that, with all of the effort put into studying opening phases, middle phases, closing phases, final loads, technical issues and everything else, there’s very little to choose from with regard to complete cups and balls routines to study. Basically, there are a couple of relatively rudimentary routines on the first DVD, a complete breakdown of Dai Vernon’s routine on the second DVD, and that’s it. Don’t get me wrong — for a lot of people, that’s going to be enough, and my own routine which I trained with is basically an abridged Dai Vernon routine designed by Erickson, and I could write forever on its merits. But there’s also been so much interesting work done on the subject by other magicians that it’s a shame Ammar couldn’t somehow either bring them in to do their own performances, or else get permission to do the routines himself, just to show the variety that’s available. He even left out a complete performance of his own working routine (the opening is included, but that’s it, and without patter). Essentially, all of the phases that are presented as done so modularly, and it’s hard to instinctually know how best to combine them into a full routine so that they escalate properly to the desired climax.

Now, if you watch that Youtube clip above, and you’ve got Ammar’s teaching DVD to reference, then you’re going to be able to break it down and figure it out technically, as you should be able to do with most other ungaffed cups and balls routines that you can find performance videos of. Still, it would have been nice to get some of the inside work, since frequently there are nuances that cannot always be gleaned from a performance video. Also, based on the way Ammar and Vernon perform the trick in its various forms on these DVDs, it’s hard to know of different presentational strategies other than just giving play-by-play patter.

If there is a consolation to this, it’s that L&L Publishing recently released three volumes on the cups and balls on their World’s Greatest Magic By The World’s Greatest Magicians series, and those three volumes should be more than adequate to fill in that need for performance models to study. Frankly, I think if you’re going to throw down the cash to learn a routine that you can close with, getting Ammar’s set and those other three DVDs might seem costly in the short term, but it could very well be the best $130 you’ve ever spent on magic. Lord knows I’ve wasted much more than that elsewhere.

Some other thoughts… One other consideration that I don’t necessarily consider a fault, but do consider a potential hazard, is the mixing of effect descriptions with methodologies. Sometimes, when a student is being shown a method at the same time as the effect is being displayed, it’s easy to lose sight of how the routine should look from a performance standpoint, and if you lack experience in knowing whether or not a particular effect is strong, it’s easy to dismiss a routine as being obvious just because of being conscious all along of the methodology. This is less a problem in the second DVD as it is in the first, but in my opinion it’s worth noting.

Also, in hoping to get to what one might consider the real work of a routine, one might be somewhat annoyed by the pace that Ammar sets out. Between many of the segments there are diversions onto topics whose importance might not seem obvious straight away. Personally, I believe that this approach is actually a good one, and it’s a shame that most teaching DVDs have conditioned us into believing that performing in full and then quickly explaining in full is the normal path to learning how to do a magic trick. Still, it can be difficult for new students to understand the importance of things like acting and timing and misdirection (etc.) right away, so having specific segments devoted to them interspersing the other, more technical sections, might prove a challenge for students hoping for a brisker pace.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Ammar doesn’t explore the various gaffed possibilities out there nearly as much as he does strategies involving sleight of hand and working ahead. Again, I don’t consider this a fault per se, since adding a gaffe doesn’t on its own make a great trick, but if one is looking to figure out how to design a routine around their fancy combo cup set (or whatever) then there really isn’t anything to help you out here.

In any case, despite those criticisms, I think Ammar’s in fine form as a teacher on this DVD set, and it easily earns four out of five stars from me. It really is one of the most rewarding plots of magic to learn, which will, if you learn it properly, have positive ramifications in just about every other branch of magic out there if you’re willing and able to thoughtfully apply the relevant techniques. Even things like mentalism or bizarrism — if it involves even the tiniest bit of sleight of hand, there’s something you can learn from the cups and balls, and you could do a lot worse than to have Ammar be your teacher with this DVD set.