We don’t know about the rest of you, but when we were grounded as a preteen, all we did while being locked in solitary was stare at ourselves in the mirror and dream of the day we’d get to move out.
But for illusionist Leon Etienne, a stint in lockdown led to a lifelong calling.
“When I was 12 years old, I was grounded by my mother. I was bored out of my mind – this is before the internet, I didn’t even have a video game console in my room at the time. I was digging under my bed, and among my fire trucks and my hockey equipment was a magic book that my grandparents had given me for Christmas,” he said. “I was just so bored from being grounded that I (learned my) first trick. I left my room, which my mom was like, ‘What are you doing out of your room?’ And I just said, ‘Mom, I want to show you this thing I just learned.’ I show her this trick, and I just watch her mind melt in front of me. And as a 12-year-old, that was like, oh my God. And I was hooked from that day.”
If you go
WHAT: Magic Rocks! Illusionist Leon Etienne.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive.
TICKETS: $26.25-$50.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.durangoconcerts.com.
That was 29 years ago, and Etienne has carved out quite a career: He’s competed on “America’s Got Talent,” performed on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” and countless other shows.
And now he will bring his show, “Magic Rocks!” to the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College on Saturday night.
It’s a cool, fast-paced show that features nonstop illusions by Etienne with the help of his lead assistant Chelsea and second assistant Alyssa, all against the backdrop of rock music.
Etienne said he has been a professional illusionist since he was 12, performing for younger kids. Once he got the magic bug, he never looked back: His influences include the old show “World’s Greatest Magic” and his early membership in a magic club in Utica, New York, where he’s from. In fact, when he was a senior in high school in 2002, his school required students to complete a community service project in order to graduate. Because the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had just happened, Etienne used his skill to put on a show for the school where students would each pay $2 to get to leave class to go watch. The money he earned went to a 9-11 fund.
“I was like, wow, if you could do this a couple weekends a month, times, you know, 40 weeks a year, 48 weeks a year, whatever, now you can be making a living. That’s when the business side clicked,” he said. “I also learned something else on the producing side, because at the time, I didn’t have enough material to do a 90-minute show. So I had to hire other magicians from the community and work together as a team. So I learned a lot on that project of how to do this moving forward. And I’ve been blessed with great mentors, too, that have helped me along the way.”
Etienne didn’t give up magic when he went to college, either: “I literally paid my way through with card tricks,” he said. “I was doing strolling magic at restaurants around town. I majored in Business Management with a focus in marketing, and all my electives were in theater.”
When it comes to the type of magic audiences can expect, Etienne said there are some tricks they won’t see.
“There’s two things I don’t particularly like, just my own personal style,” he said. “I have nothing against magicians or entertainers who use it – I will not portray myself as a mentalist who is really reading minds. There is a part of the show where I say I’m going to read your mind, but definitely there’s no question that this is a theatrical piece and not actual spiritualism. Then the other thing, Pen and Teller say this best: Any performer, not just magician, that actually puts themselves in real danger during the show, is the fool. So I avoid real danger. However, we can make it (look dangerous). If you ask an audience member after the show which tricks were dangerous, I guarantee you about seven or eight of the segments, they think those are dangerous. And they’re not wrong. But we’re also taking calculated measures and safety factor that people don’t see.”
Etienne incorporating rock ’n’ roll in to the show wasn’t exactly a stretch, either, he said – he loves magic, he loves rock: Why wouldn’t he combine them?
“I just put the two together,” he said. “What really opened my eyes to it is there was a magician when I was younger called Lance Burton. And Lance was basically the magician’s magician – if you ask people to think of a magician, Lance Burton is the picture you’d have in your mind – tuxedo, good-looking gentleman, the whole thing. He does what we call classic magic really well. And then I saw a band called Trans-Siberian Orchestra. They basically took classic Christmas and just rocked it to the Nth degree. Once I saw that concert, I said, ‘Wait a second, Leon, you don’t have to wear tails. You don’t have to have classical violin music behind you. You could literally rock. And that was the day Magic Rocks! was born. It was just literally between taking a rock concert that I had attended and all the knowledge I had already studied and gained from magic and going, let’s do something a little different here.”
And when it comes to bringing his family-friendly show to Durango, he hopes the performance will give audience members a chance to relax and leave the noise of the outside world behind – if only for an evening.
“The world could really use some magic in it now more than ever; you don’t have to go far to find negativity, right? You can turn on your local news. You can open your phone. There’s negativity everywhere,” he said. “The thing I like best about this show is someone can come for 90 minutes, shut off their brain from outside distractions and totally get lost in the experience of wonder, of joy, a little bit of comedy. Magic is a universal language. There’s no age barrier, there’s no race barrier, there’s no language barrier. It’s just truly a universal art form to be appreciated.”
katie@durangoherald.com
