Sleight of hand is a type of magic.
Sleight of hand is the discipline that consists of using your hands to perform various tricks and thus deceive the viewer. Conjurers, therefore, are illusionists since they create effects that appear magical, without observers being able to discover the physical or logical reasons that support them.
Understanding magic as a performing art, it can be said that sleight of hand is a type of magic . The key to his tricks lies in using his hands quickly and skillfully to cause confusion in the spectators. Sleight of hand can be framed in close -up magic, whose appeal lies in the closeness between the magician and the audience.
Those who dream of working as a conjurer have to know that they must not only study and practice but also have undeniable communicative qualities, great mental and tactile agility and even the ability to "deceive" the public.
Types of sleight of hand
Within sleight of hand there are different specialties. Card magic consists of performing tricks with cards. The conjurer, for example, can guess which card from the deck a person in the audience takes, without having seen that card. It is also common for him to arrange the cards in a particular way or to use them as part of a prediction that is immediately confirmed.
Numismagic is also part of sleight of hand. This branch consists of the use of coins to perform tricks. The disappearance of a coin before the eyes of spectators and its subsequent appearance in some unusual place is a common trick of conjurers who dedicate themselves to numismagic.
The Argentinian René Lavand (who was missing an arm, which made his tricks even more surprising) and the Spanish Juan Tamariz are some of the most popular conjurers in history.
Sleight of hand is based on the use of the hands to perform tricks.
Other kinds of magic
In the same way, we cannot ignore the existence of other magic specialties:
- Escapism . As its name indicates, it consists of the illusionist managing to free himself from different traps and even from a place where he has been locked up. Throughout history there have been numerous magicians who have specialized in this discipline. However, the most significant so far has been the Hungarian Harry Houdini , who has become the reference for later others such as David Blaine or David Copperfield .
- Mentalism . This discipline is defined by the fact that whoever carries it out is able to read another person's mind. In Spain there is a particularly recognized magician of this type , Anthony Blake .
Legerdemain in other areas
Within the world of art we have to highlight the existence of a painting titled “The conjurer and the thief” . It is a pictorial work by the Flemish artist Hieronymus Bosch , which dates back to the year 1502 and shows how an audience member at an illusionist's show is robbed by a thief without even realizing it.
In the cinema, for its part, we find the film “The Illusionist” ( 2006 ), which narrates the relationship between a famous magician and a duchess, who was an old love.