http://www.yourmagic.com/~shop/cgi-bin/c......tex.html

Click that link to see McBride's latest product - the vortex dancing illuminated cane.

There is also a demo, which is quite nice.

What are your views and thoughts regarding this product? This is merely a topic to generate discussion, I wasn't planning to buy it.

Kevin

Jeff actually offered it to me early when I was out there last. It is an excellent prop if you fit it into a routine properly. It goes excellently with my po-mo opener, but if there is no place for it in your act, don't buy it.

Is it the same as he uses on his Stage videos?

I watched the video. I like the lights. Great idea, but the cane looked a little small to me. Maybe if it were a bit longer...

It looks slightly different than the one he uses on stage, as other people mentioned, a little smaller. Also the one on his, the lights could be "plucked" off if I remember correctly.

Jeff did a demo with this at his lecture at the IBM in Cleveland.
It is a step up from the standard cane routines and the lighting effect is quite different than on the video.
When the cane is spinning it adds a couple additional colors and appears wider, does wonders in hiding the method.
The cane that Jeff used in his act definitely had many more features.
It was a nice change, but a little out of my league.
All the best
Nick

As one who uses light up props regularly, I can promise you that a device like this will score really big with your audiences. Also realize that the nature of this prop makes your magic much more theatrical and unique! It could drive up your stock as special entertainer.

I saw this before it was released when I was together with Jeff in Amsterdam earlier this year.
The way Jeff just picked it up and swirled it around was enough to sell the product on the spot (I did not buy as it is not my style and I couldn't use it in my act).

The stick is smaller than a dancing cane, but this leads to a greater variety of manipulation because it is easier to handle.

For the serious buyer I would first compare with the illuminated canes offered by Juan mayoral of Portugal.

It's a little bit expensive for what you get..
I've saw Juan Mayoral back on FISM2000 selling a dancing cane like that one, and it was good, but much cheaper.

I'm in need of the vortex dubble set, do any of you know where I can find it. On McBride store is out of stock

Best regards

Why call it a dancing cane when the audience only sees a glowing stick? Something can be said about appearing canes. Today’s audience doesn’t see people walking around with a cane. If they happen to see an older person with a walking stick it will more than likely have a curved handle and a push button in the shaft to adjust the height of the walking stick. Then again it may be a walker that people see more of.

“I really liked it when you turn that red hanky into that stick!” WTF!!!!

Yea, people today don’t know what a straight looking stick is. LOL

We call it a cane because we know it is supposed to be because we are doing things that have been done for YEARS before we were born. Back in the 20’s and 30’s it was common to see a man dress in a suit and wearing a hat. Many displayed a cane (walking stick) because it added to the overall look. We are living in the past and only fooling ourselves if we think that a stick looks like a cane. Then again, we are always thinking like a magician and don’t see the things as normal people do.

Because a walking stick was used and often seen in years gone by, it was just a normal thing for a magician to do a dancing cane (back then). Not so today………. “Wow that was a cool looking glowing stick!” I don’t want people to say that about a routine that I worked hard to design and blocked.

I feel if you still want to present the dancing stick (I mean cane) and update it, then why not use something that is a common sight and used often? Makes sense doesn’t it. If you take the time and REALLY look around what would you see? Raise of hands if you see canes…. what you see are iPhones, cell phone, kindles, nooks. Maybe this is what the magician of today needs to make dance and forget about dancing walking sticks that our grandfather’s father used. Unless you want to be like all the other magicians who like making a stick float and move about.

For the ones that think I am full of crap and really like being a carbon copy of the next magician and who thinks that a floating stick looks cool, I bet that you can’t even name the parts of a cane. Here is a hint, there are four main parts.


Just my 2 cents

Hey,

I use canes, real canes, to walk around sometimes.

Plus, magicians are known for using glowing props that looknothing like real world. But hey, we do things that look nothing like real word aswell - and it is FUN.

The whole point of being a magician is that you are by virtue of your powers/talents set apart from mere mortals and part of that "being set apart" quality extends to the magician's apparel and accoutrements... There have been discussions before on the Café about lay audiences miscalling a cane as a "wand," but if calling a "cane" a "wand" gives them a frame of reference, then I can live with the misnomer. As to the parts of a cane--there are many everyday objects whose parts have names that the average person does not know.

For instance, there is a "name" for the plastic piece wrapped around the ends of a shoelace to facilitate threading the lace through the eyelets of a shoe. The fact that most people don't know the word for that piece of plastic does not mean that they're bewildered when they see it or that they aren't aware of its function.

There was also a discussion in the "Smooth as Silk" forum of the Café about whether audiences know what a handkerchief is. I still maintain that magicians worry too much about aspects of the art that lay audiences accept at face value. Purists object to the use of any object that looks like an obvious magic "prop." But many everyday professions have their own tools and accessories that the audience would have no name for but which the average Joe or Jane sees everyday and accepts as a normal part of their reality. Do you know what the the metal ring that holds the eraser to the pencil is called? Probably not. But it does have a name. You can find the word for that metal ring at
http://www.pencils.com/pencil-making-today
But don't lose any sleep or get distracted from writing down your shopping list just because you can't name that little part of your pencil.

Nobody nowadays wears a cape... But no one seems discombobulated when they see Superman and Batman wearing one.

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez

Thanks Ray, now I can't stop imaging hideous magic involving dancing walkers...

We have a business broker in town that carries a walking stick with him everywhere he goes in town. He is not old, he is not crippled, but he is very wealthy.

See?

I also use walking sticks every so often, just for kicks.

But then, again, I'm eccentric. Very.

My issue with the VORTEX. and most other light up canes is that the routine most often used with them is not a "floating" routine.

It's a bola routine.

As in.. it looks like the magician is swinging something around.. especially if he does that hideous "around the head" move that is a dead giveaway of the method.

99% of the floating cane or stick routines happen to FAST (not in the length of the routines, those are not fast enough).. but in the speed in which the object floats. If it's floating.. why does it look like it's being Whipped around.. and why so often in total blackness?

I sometimes find it pretty to watch the swinging lights.. but I see it as JUST THAT.. swinging lights.. and not magic at all.

I understand (I think) the point Michael (makeupguy) is making that the Vortex routine looks like a "bola routine," although my own comparison would be that it looks like a nunchaku routine, which is perhaps apt since the Vortex routine reminds me a little of Bruce Lee's nunchaku performance in "Enter the Dragon."

-----Amado "Sonny" Narvaez

Not that long ago I finally figured out EXACTLY how Jeff did the Vortex routine, with this I mean, not that long ago I was still an 'audience member' someone who didn't look at the details that closely, I knew how the dancing cane worked, but the 'around the head' move confused me even more.. To me darkness and magic go hand in hand, not only to hide the method, but darkness makes it that much more mysterious, I've seen video's of people doing the dancing cane outdoors or with very bright lighting, and the method was still concealed, but still, I didn't give me the same feeling as when I see Jeff McBride do it or David Copperfield for example..

Yeah, magi tend to be too picky when it comes to the D. Cane.

I qui doing it on my live show because it has been utterly banalized. I had two routines: One that sported 4 minutes (Of floating stuff, around 2) and one that was 1:40min with a plethora of diferent moves incorporated in the coreography.

No tads will be ever given by me for those "keep it to 30 seconds TOPS" guys. Audiences always loved it and I never had one person figure out the method or go all "oooh, I see what you did there..." on me.

Bu what do I know, lol.