You're about to learn two ways to levitate yourself.
Let's do this.
Here's the basic gimmicking for the trick. You're going to need
shoes that you can get in and out of quickly. I happen to have slip-ons here but you
can use lace-up shoes and loosely tie them up. Very
loosely till you can get your feet in and out. Now for demonstration
purposes, I have here binder clips just to show you how the two
shoes are together. The best way to do this though is to get
some velcro and put it on one side here - hooks, and
the material on the other side. And then, so if you have black shoes get
black velcro. If you have white shoes get white velcro.
Just have a strip along the side stuck to the edge of your shoes.
You can walk around and when you're ready to do the trick you stick your
shoes together, cover your feet with your jacket, step
out and you're ready to perform the trick
as i'll show you. So here's how the trick works. As you can see I have the double
shoes here and I've stepped out of the shoe with my
right foot here. The jacket goes in front just like this. I'm bending my
knees here, there's two ways to do this: you can bend your knees
as you place the jacket down. Then what you're doing is just
showing the shoes out in front and then lifting up
like this, which is the easier way. It's easier to keep your balance. You can go
forward and to the side. If you're really daring
you can kind of go to the side and create kind of an illusion where you're
floating sideways and then you just come back down.
And then as you place it here. You can step back into your shoe here and
kind of wiggle the jacket. The other way you can do this and this is much harder
is you can actually stand straighter and then
step up on your heel like this and create the illusion. It's probably more
convincing because you gain more height with your body as you go
up but you'll have to experiment which way works best for you.
The idea is you're always balancing on this back foot here
to cause the levitation to seemingly occur.
So the exposed view here again. Double shoes,
and then bend and lift up and then descend down. And from the front it looks
like you're levitating. Now you're going to want some distance
when you do this trick because you want people looking down
at the tips of the shoes here. That's very important and you want that
angle for them to be looking down and that way
they won't spot the back supporting foot. If they are at eye
level, they're going to see the back foot with
the support there so it's very important To give yourself
a little distance and make sure your spectators are looking down.
Kind of gather them in a group because you don't want them looking from the
side and you should have success with this trick.
This method is actually very simple. Now look at the angle. I'm standing here and
the idea is this leg here is the one that
lifts up. And what you're doing is just with this other leg, just standing on
your toe. But by having this other leg in front,
it covers this action so it looks like you're floating. Now you have to get this
angle correct. It's about a 45 degree from your
audience so you have to play with this and make sure your
audience members are grouped closely together. And then you can do the lift
and come down. The idea is that they're looking down from above a little bit
and so you have to get some distance, you normally need about
five to eight feet and if they're looking down,
then this shoe here should kind of look just kind of like the back heel. All they
should be able to see. So you have to play around with this
angle. It's very angle sensitive but something like that. That's
pretty decent there. You do this momentarily
and usually you get a reaction. A lot of times they're not necessarily looking
just at your feet, they'll look at your body as well. So you could use that
somewhat as misdirection at that point. And then
they're going to often ask if you can you do it again. And all you have to do is just
tell them that you've you've expended all your
energy that day and you can't do it again. Because if they watch you do it
again, they're going to figure it out. So again, the exposed view here. TYou're just
lifting up on your one leg and keeping the other
foot level, kind of like that. And it's just a
brief moment. Try and hold it and then come down.