Brunei is truly a kingdom of unexploited treasures. They are the youth who show their many different talents, from card manipulation, beat-boxing to magic. During a recent Magic Show at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam, young Bruneians demonstrated their skills and dedication to art of magic with finesse and style.
Opening the show was Hafiz Salim alias Fizz, a card artist or 'Cardist'. Cardistry is the non-magical manipulation of playing cards with intent to display creativity, art and skill. His performance was involved in a sleight of hand with a card and flame which left the audience in astonishment.
Hafiz has been practising the art of cardistry for about five years. He developed an interest in cardistry after he watched a fancy shuffling. Later he started to research on it using the Internet. Cardistry is regarded as an extreme sport in Europe and Asia, and Salim has plans to pull off complicated tricks with ropes and coins.
Grabbing cards shuffled in mid-air, creating complex maths boxes to add up to 98 or just reading minds, and putting an audience member's mobile phone in peril, Nadzri Harif brought everyone's attention from the get go. A special guest star in his performance was 'Mr Cuddles' - a teddy-bear. The toy was tossed randomly on the audience to choose participants for his magic tricks. Nadzri has all the elements of natural showmanship, from his banter and wit, to the ability to seemingly swallow a long balloon whole combining with sword-swallowing.
He has performed magic in several countries including Malaysia,Viet Nam and Africa. "I love close up magic such as street performances, because I love people's reaction. Magic has the power to affect people, whether it is surprise, fear or amusement," he said. Nadzri was inspired to learn magic after a card trick performance which amazed him so much.
He has been a professional magician for about a year, but the journey from a mere viewer to a performing magician took four years. The Magic Showcase was his first professional headlining act in Brunei which was to test the waters and to see if he could bring it back to Melbourne where he is a final year student of Geomatics.
