Dani DaOrtiz: UTOPIA

Finally a release date!

On November 11, 2011, Luis de Matos Productions will release a four disc DVD set on the magic and thinking of Dani DaOrtiz. Priced at slightly more than $150USD the set will have eight hours of Dani's work and his philosophy on close up card magic.

Amazingly there are some who still don't know much about DaOriz mainly because much of his work continues to be in Spanish and he only appears to get to the U.S. once per year. Being the sick sort of person I am, in the past I've ordered literature in Spanish then used an online language converter to better understand his material.

Fortunately in the past 15 months or so via the Essential Magic Conference, Dani has appeared and both performed and lectured in English and what a treat its been. Just last night I was watching this years lecture on his piece "Prediccon Gemela" on the EMC 2011 discs and was blown away at how Dani tries to simplify his presentation.

There's one point where he says (paraphrasing), "If I want to move two cards from the bottom to the top......I move'em from the bottom to the top". His point here is make the 'important' unimportant. Engage your spectators, have some fun and get them to focus on what you're asking them to do and not what you're doing right under their noses. Go take a look at disc 3(?) from this year's EMC set where Dani performs his piece then explains his thinking.

With a release on 11/11 it'll probably be the weekend of 11/19 - 11/20 before they're received so I'm clearing the calendar and plan to take the set into my home office with a couple of decks of cards and my notebook for a joyous weekend of learning.

UPDATED: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2011




Apparently Team DaOrtiz and Penguin Magic have an agreement where they can distribute Utopia exclusively until 11/11/11 so I received the set on 10/21 which was a Friday. My plan was to view the complete set once then again about a week later with notebook & deck of cards in hand. 


These are my thoughts after finishing the first viewing.  


Even though I think I've seen just about every YouTube clip Dani has been in as well as his previous DVDs & downloads, my first impression of Utopia is this is a Dani I haven't seen before. Disc One has Dani in a formal close up show for approximately 50 spectators and he's more commanding, theatrical yet charming than ever. The show itself has a feel of an actual paid performance being taped for this DVD shoot vs a magic DVD shoot with a live audience (I hope that makes sense). The crowd's reactions were enthusiastic but restrained with none of the over-the-top stuff you almost always see these days on magic DVDs. 


The other thought that ran through my mind was Tiger Woods. 


Woods did a TV ad a few years ago when he was at the top of his game. The ad opens with him alone bouncing a golf ball one handed on the blade of a club (a middle iron I think), then switching hands, taking the club around his back, and through his legs with the ball in total control not bouncing more than a foot or two above the blade of the club. Tiger walks with this combo a several feet as the voice over begins to wrap up the message. 


Suddenly Tiger bounces the ball a final time five or six feet high and while the ball is at its peak, grips the club with both hands and whacks it a couple hundred yards down the range. He was just toying with us and jazzing around until he dropped the hammer with a drive that most weekend golfers couldn't strike off a tee. 


That was the impression I had watching Dani perform his formal show before a real audience. He's just toying and jazzing around while performing these miracles and having a grand old time with his audience. David Britland's piece in this month's Genii calls him 'happy-go-lucky' and he's right. Dani is charming, warm, funny, intelligent and passionate about the art which comes through in his performances as well as teaching on the DVD and even conducting 1on1 interviews with producer Luis DeMatos.    


Dani speaks in both Spanish and English with subtitles available for seven languages. If you view Dani's teaching lecture on the 2011 EMC discs you'll get an idea of his command of the language and the type of teaching he does on Utopia. 


As for the impact of the magic itself, my jaw was dropping throughout both the performances and explanations. The technical difficulty of the set runs from "very easy" (an unintentional running joke by DaOrtiz) to intermediate. You don't have to be a move monkey but some tricks require the ability to handle doubles very well, perform a classic pass, etc. 


As to detailed instructions on the moves themselves Dani does provide explanations but this isn't an instructional set on foundational card sleights. DaOrtiz's advice on how to master the picking up of a double from the table and snapping it as a single is to do it 1000 times ("It's very easy"). 


Utopia is the result of more than a decade of DaOritz collecting field data from thousands of live performances. He shares his knowledge of timing, focus, attitude, human nature, behaviour patterns, perspective and psychology in the art of magic as it was taught to him via the Spanish school of card magic. Clearly Ascanio, Jose Carroll, Fred Kaps, Gabi Pareras, Lennert Green and of course Juan Tamariz have played an important role in his development. 


While most of the tricks are technically within the grasp of an intermediate card person it's the subtleties, psychological games and construction of his routines which makes your jaw drop when DaOrtiz performs. The lessons are wonderful and this could very well be a new instant classic for card magic but the real secrets in Utopia are not executed by your fingers but by the space between your ears.