HARRIS MAGIC - TJ & DOTTY

Some of this information was reported on by  Mike Weatherford a reporter in Las Vegas.

It seems that once again magic is takeing a new direction.  Are people growing tired of the large illusion shows.  Many Vegas illusion shows are coming to an end.  Maybe it's just time for magic to go in a different direction.   Every illusion show lately all seem to be the same thing.  Danceing girls music playing as the magician moves along the large stage to a empty box where he produces a tiger, lion, or another girl.  Lets face how many ways can you cut a person in half. 

Andrew Mayne, publisher of the Web site iTricks (which broke the story of Burton's departure before the local press), notes Blaine's street theater shifted magic "to things that feel real. When a guy pushes a box onstage, it's obviously a magic box."

Mayne says "every one of my friends working cruise ships" -- the bulk of working pros -- have been asked to "get rid of the illusions" and scale down their acts as a cost-cutting measure. That levels the playing field for the more comedic acts, such as Mac King and Penn & Teller, who seem on stronger footing locally.

Blame the recession, sure. But it's also fair to ask if the likes of Hans Klok and the Fercos Brothers weren't already threatened by changing tastes, that the public is tired of dancers circling a box to "Carmina Burana" before the box flies open to reveal a tiger.

"Look at the evolution of Copperfield's show," Mayne says of the Strip's most successful magician. "The dance sequences are gone."

Magic isn't going to vanish from Vegas it is just going through one of it's many changes.

Even cruise lines are asking magicians to dump their illusion shows.  This could open up some doors for orther type magical acts aboard ships.