The Manhattan Magician

NEW NEWS DECEMBER 2002

This Sagittarian month, we celebrate Ben Robinson's 20 years performing in New York City as . . .

Written and compiled by E. R. Rose

July 2002: An impromtu performance at The Center for Jewish History in front of the original Houdini Water Torture Cell. He magically made the paper hat worn by the teacher in the background and also told the children about the great mystifier. Photo: P. Isles

October 5, 2001: At a Ground Zero Command Center, a 5am performance for New York's finest, FBI, EMT, and FEMA workers. He provided magic when smiles were scarce. Click on the picture for the full story. Photo: A. Rosenberg

Above and below left: Robinson makes a glass of Jack Daniels float in his hangout, Circa Tabac in SoHo (Summer 2002, saluting the Society of American Magicians Centennial and during a concert

performance with Rebecca Moore and her band Prevention of Blindness at the famous Naumburg bandshell in Central Park, August 2001. The tape of this performance is available at The Store. Robinson called his sequence with Moore's band, "The best 3 minutes of magic I've ever done."

August, 2001 Robinson hosts an avant garde concert at the Central Park bandshell. Images above and below convey Kate Milliken opening the video, card hurling,

a dramtic guillotine illusion. 3 weeks later, the world changed.

Magic Hands. Above left: a scene from the 1999 video Ben Robinson: Master Cold Reader by Karl Petry. Above right: a performance at a party in SoHo, Summer, 2000. Robinson says "I really like this picture because it is not posed, shows a common moment of a magician's performance, and illustrates the real art of close up magic, unaided by TV editorial tricks ."

Photo: Susanna Gaterud

Above: December 1999, Ben Robinson is the first professional magician to lecture at The Parapsychology Foundation in New York. Speaking on the subject of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences. In 2001 he released his ten years of research on CD:

Ben Robinson on Synchonicity.

Facing a marksman, and catching a live bullet between his teeth, Halloween, 1997. Taped in New York, on a rifle range (paid double the hourly fee in advance in case anything went wrong!), Robinson's 6th and last bullet catch. Will there be another? Will he join those he wrote about in his acclaimed volume Twelve Have Died ?

A realistic illusion for Kate Teale's art gallery exhibit in 1997 in midtown Manhattan. The bloody arm was cut and restored in a small film, which was the only non static image in the show.

Below, a blast of fire opens Robinson's show at the Rose Room at Lincoln Center in 1994; a show he produced starring the Off B'way hit, STOMP.

As a possessed shaman, Robinson dancing, backed by a contortionist and the first home movies ever made--of his father and grandfather as a young men.

1995: Pace University Theatre, downtown, New York. Ben Robinson's show GHOST mixing rock 'n roll, magic, 1920's silent film of his grandfather, father and circus performers. Created with composer Dan Seiden, who wrote the title song, the long-haired Robinson spent a year touring with the band before launching this show that would eventually tour nationally and influence David Copperfield, The Rolling Stones, Cirque du Soleil and appear on The Today Show on NBC.

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