Deluxe Version
FEATURE STORY
DAVID BLAINE I N
S P A D E S
It’s Blaine’s World And We’re Just Living In It. If you like your prestidigitation with a little regurgitation, David Blaine has that in spades as the newest and edgiest magic man on the Las Vegas Strip. DAVID BLAINE: IN SPADES at Resorts World Las Vegas is the first-ever residency for the street magician-turnedworld-renowned daredevil, but after 20 years of deathdefying stunts, unimaginable illusions, and mind-blowing card tricks, I am pleased to report Blaine hasn’t lost any of his…well, magic. I found that out firsthand before our interview when Blaine surprised me with two new jaw-dropping card tricks for my birthday…over FaceTime! I was speechless, but clearly, he was feeling frisky post-opening weekend. “This show is everything I had hoped for, dreamed of and imagined,” says Blaine. “It’s taken me many years, but it’s coming together exactly how I planned.” Mind you, his is not just your basic pull-a-rabbit-out-of-ahat kind of magic act. To understand Blaine’s world is to know he has survived being frozen in ice for 63 hours; being buried in an
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underground coffin for seven days; and being suspended atop a 100-foot pillar for 35 hours. “Everything is possible,” says the man who also broke a record holding his breath underwater for over 17 minutes and fasted inside a Plexiglass box over the River Thames for 44 days. (October 19th marked the 19th anniversary of his unboxing!) But an on-going Las Vegas production in front of a live audience was uncharted territory…until now.
“Every show will be different until I feel the show is exactly what it needs to be, which means it will be changing every single night until it’s done,” says Blaine. Without revealing too much, because you really need to experience IN SPADES in person, Blaine makes full use of the enormous theater inside Resorts World. He dives 78 feet (20 G’s!) into cardboard boxes; performs silly human tricks like the “Smash and Stab” or “Needle and Thread;” and shocks with the aforementioned regurgitation (think hangers, wedding rings, frogs, etc.), most of the time with audience participation.
