As of Monday, curious phenomena will agitate the city of Quebec. More than 2,500 magicians will appear in the Old Capital, ready to amaze young and old alike during the Quebec Magic Festival. Witchcraft activities will enchant the ExpoCité site and the Québec City Convention Centre, not to mention the shopping streets of Old Québec and Lower Town.
This carnival of illusion, which takes place from July 25 to 31, will host with great fanfare the World Championship of Magic of the International Federation of Magical Societies (FISM).
The “Olympics of Magic”
“It’s really a historic first,” says Luc Langevin, spokesperson for the 11e edition of the Festival. Met under the shadow of the forest giants of the Sir-George-Étienne-Cartier square in Montreal, the illusionist well known to Quebecers struggles to contain his excitement.
And for good reason, the most prestigious magic competition, which the spokesperson compares without embarrassment to the Olympic Games, will leave its native Europe, where it was born in 1948, to cross the Atlantic and land in North America. “I can’t believe that the FISM arrives in Quebec before any other American city”, is surprised the man who spent the first 24 years of his life in the city. Along the way, he sends flowers to the organizers of the Festival, his long-time friends Renée-Claude Auclair and Pierre Hamon, for having had the audacity to nominate the national capital.
During this week of festivities, the most promising talents, from all over the world and gathered at the Québec City Convention Centre, will compete to impress judges and fans. The challenge promises to be daunting for these suitors, because the jurors, themselves versed in the science of Merlin, are more demanding than the public in general, warns the conjurer. The numbers, typically silent and musical in order to circumvent language barriers, will therefore be more nested. “Author’s magic”, says Mr. Langevin ironically.
Go back in time
In parallel with the World Championship, the Festival offers a series of galas presented at the Center des Congrès. That of July 26 will also be hosted by the spokesperson for the event. “It’s a childhood dream to participate in FISM. Even if I am not a competitor, but rather a guest artist, I did not want to miss the chance to present a number in the context of the FISM”, he confides, his face beaming.
Whether the public is made up of the simply curious or the incredulous, the magic art has only one aim: to amaze. “When you see a good magic trick, you smile and you have sparkles in your eyes. We are torn between questioning and wonder,” says the creator of illusions.
“The time of suspension of disbelief [lorsqu’un spectateur met de côté son scepticisme, NDLR] is very difficult to generate, and magic is one of the only arts that manages to do so,” he argues. A good magician, of course, never reveals his secrets, but even more, he is the one who manages to go back in time and bring the viewer back to his tender childhood. “Magic generates an emotion that we experience every day when we are young,” underlines the illusionist Langevin, listing the first times a child sees a plane fly or meets Santa Claus.
“It’s a feeling that we experience less and less as we get older,” he adds. For someone who has made more than one ace of spades disappear in his life, these moments of daze are all the more precious because they are rare. “At gatherings like the one in Quebec City, there are a lot of young creators who will show me, I’m sure, things that will amaze me. When that happens, I don’t try to figure out the secret. I try to preserve this emotion. »
A street art that is modernizing
True to form, the Festival will invade the shopping streets of the fortified city as well as the ExpoCité site. On the occasion of dozens of street magic performances, passers-by will reconnect with the origins of illusionism. “Before being considered an art, magic was seen as a curiosity. Something that buskers or beggars did to get attention,” says Langevin.
However, nowadays, the disciplines are multiple, ranging from intimate micromagic to impressive large-scale magic, without forgetting the subtle art of mentalists. While creators are using new technologies, Mr. Langevin believes that illusionism is not entirely rooted in the collective imagination of the 21st century.e century. “Magic has not yet had what Cirque du Soleil did to the circus,” he believes, before adding that events like the one in Quebec City help to democratize it.
Whether it moves people in the street or indoors, whether it uses the banal deck of cards or the most breathtaking stagings, the magic art remains all in all very simple in the eyes of its main Quebec ambassador: “The idea is to be, for a few moments, transported. »