Night Show

On the Friday evening of Buskerfest, there was a group show with several of the buskers doing a few elements of their routine together. I photographed the first two elements of the show. It was hosted by Dan Craig, one half of the pair Street Circus, who I'll be showing in a coming post. His wife Kim opened up the show with fellow acrobat Reuben DotDotDot. Before things got started, she was warming up on the handstands.

Then the show got started, with Reuben sharing the stage. I filmed a video of the two of them, which you can see right here. You might want to turn down the volume though.

The second part of the group show was Jaardu, a street magician billed as hailing from India who mixes together Eastern and Western influences into his act. While his actual name, listed in the Buskerfest brochure, is quite English, he does have the look of someone of a mixed background. Jaardu started off by having a child from the audience help him in assembling his turban.

For the group show, Jaardu took one part of his full act. He chose a lady from the audience for a trick involving a deck of cards... and a cobra in the basket. 

She selects one card from the deck, and he takes her around the circle of the audience so that everyone can see. The card is put back into the deck.

Then she was told to give the full deck to the snake. Yes, it popped out. And no, it was not a real cobra.

Jaardu instructed the snake to shuffle the cards and select the chosen card. Cards were tossed out at random, the snake chose the wrong card, got admonished: "you stupid snake!" And the snake came up out of the basket with the right card. It's a lot of fun to watch, and Jaardu brings a gifted sense of comedy to his act.