Review: Streetmagic
The magician’s thong trick
Tatu Tyni is one of about ten professional magicians in Finland.
There are other young magicians in Finland besides Iiro Seppänen. Not very many, though, and the magic circle is small. Tatu Tynik also uses balls borrowed from Seppänen in his new performance.
The magic of the 28-year-old Tyni is a mixture of traditional magic, art and the so-called new circus. Tyni describes his first solo performance in Finland, Street Magic, as precise magic in the spirit of improvisation. He will perform eight performances at the Helsinki City Theatre’s Studio Pasila in November and December.
Tyni wants to surprise his audience. In Finland, it is not very difficult, as only a few people here have seen the performances of a good magician. For example, Tyni does not conjure five balls in a tailcoat, but in a tango, for example, to appear and disappear from her body, as she did in her previous solo performance. However, the Bare Naked Magic performance was only seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as it is difficult to find an arena for such art in Finland.
“Tango tricks are quite radical compared to traditional magic. My own solos are important to me.”
Even though Tyn is not seen on poles now, he offers other treats. In the Street Magic performance, Tyni conjures up gum into a rubber ball to the beat of Glenn Gould’s music. The ball bounces into Tyni’s hand, and Tyni knocks the ball that turns into an egg on the edge of the glass. When poured onto a plate, the magic dough turns into a sacher cake, which the audience can taste.
As a teenager, Tatu Tyni was impressed by Timo Taikuri’s banana with a zipper and started practicing seriously. As a young man, Tyni attended high school in Oulu for two weeks and then went out into the world. At the age of 17, he performed at a magicians’ conference in Las Vegas.
Now Tyni is trying to conjure up work for herself. Things are under a rock, because Finland is not a circus country after all. Four years ago, however, he was the first Finnish representative of magic and circus art to receive a one-year state artist grant.
Next spring, he will go to his girlfriend’s home country, Japan. There will be meetings with agents, performances in theatres, planning magic for a dance performance and then the everyday life of an ordinary magician, i.e. department store and hotel gigs.
“There are 50,000 magicians in Japan. However, there are also a lot of small magic clubs, i.e. jobs for magicians; People come to eat and the magician works magic next to their table.”
The problem with magicians is that no one needs a good magician. All you need is an entertainer for a Christmas party, a cruise, a retirement home or an anniversary party.
However, Tyni refuses to be an ordinary magician. But he has noticed that a magician who jumps into the art field is quite an orphan. Employing myself with my own solo performances and more artistic skills has required a lot of work.
“As an artist, I mainly compare myself to freelance contemporary dancers, whose situation in this country is almost as bad.”
So the magician sometimes lives on the edge of risk, not only in terms of the difficulty of the tricks. However, Tyni’s head is not cold, quite the opposite. His hair caught fire.
“It was still at the first gig in Finland after the Las Vegas success. The intention was to conjure up many burning candles in his hands, but the fire stuck to his hair. In principle, my tricks are not more difficult than I can be, but even in the new performance, many are a bit on the borderline.”