Camilo The Magician goes old-school
Cards give way to other classic props, and casual clothes are traded for a tux and top hat
Camilo Dominguez is known for his original and custom-made illusions, usually involving a deck of cards. But in Abracadabra, the Colombia born-and-raised magician dons tux and top hat to recreate feats of prestidigitation made famous by magicians of yesteryear. We talked to Dominguez, who now makes his home in Vancouver, about his first trick, donning evening formal wear, and being subject of a song by Vancouver indiepop band Said the Whale.
(Partial proceeds from the shows will go to the Morquio B Foundation.)
Q: What inspired you to do your first trick?
A: I think I saw a magician on TV. That’s my guess. My grandma says it’s because my uncle used to do a couple of tricks, my brother says it’s because we saw a magician at a restaurant in Miami, and my dad says it’s because one of his friends is a famous magician in Colombia.
You began at an early age. Magic is probably not something you want to break into when you’re in your 50s.
Yes and no. Like everything else, you get better. Especially with the cards. Cards are my comfort zone. I’ve been carrying a deck of cards since I was four. So I know how to use them. If you start later, then it’s going to be hard to do the movement because your hands are not going to adjust very easily. But I know a lot of people who started in their 20s and 30s and 40s. But I’m lucky that, as a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
How did the Said the Whale song Camilo (the Magician) come about?
I was in Victoria, attending high school, and I came to visit my older brother at University of B.C., and we went to a party together. I always bring my deck of cards ... and I ended up doing some magic for some members of Said the Whale. I didn’t know who they were at all. Then when I moved to Vancouver about a year later, a friend of my brother said, “There’s this band Said the Whale who are writing a song about you.” But I didn’t know that they were that big of a band. I thought, Oh I will have to go and see them. And I was expecting something small, even a concert in someone’s house. But they were performing at the Commodore. I didn’t know what the Commodore was. I went to the Commodore, they started playing and they played Camilo (the Magician) and I fell in love with the song and the band, and we became pretty close friends after that.
Abracadabra marks a bit of a departure for you, is that right?
Since I started performing in 2009, the theatres have been getting bigger and bigger but I always stick with close-up magic. It is one or two or three cameras, depending on the size of the stage, and a big screen, and 95 per cent or even 99 per cent of the show is 52 cards, and then sometimes I throw in a little different object, like something with an umbrella or with ropes. And I wear casual clothes. In my imagination, people come into my house to see magic, so I want to make it nice and casual. But then I was thinking a couple of years ago, I want to do a show where I bring something different, especially to a Vancouver audience because they’ve been seeing me for quite awhile now. And I decided with my older brother, who works with me now, let’s bring back the classic magician with the top hat. And let’s try to get out of the comfort zone and do classic magic. Not in the sense of illusions, I’m not going to be doing levitations. They’re still like smallscale magic, but not with a deck of cards.