Nada X Aqui — Jorge Blass’ “Nothing Here” is Something Rare

What’s on the mind of Jorge Blass? The cast of Nada X Aqui: Jandro, Jorge, Inés, and Luis Piedrahita.

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By Mark Nelson“Nothing here!” is a pact between magi-

cian and audience. Whether spoken or unspoken, it is the magician’s way of calling attention to an empty box, an empty sleeve, an empty hand, and to forewarn the audi-ence that something special is about to take place. It is a magician’s way of saying to the spectators, “Pay attention.”

Viewers throughout Spain have been paying attention in large numbers to the TV series Nada X Aqui, now in its third successful season on Madrid’s TV Cuatro. Nada X Aqui, which roughly translates to “Nothing Here,” is a weekly magical expe-rience featuring an impressively talented magic “gang of four.” Created and hosted by the 28-year-old award-winning magician Jorge Blass, the show incorporates magic, mystery, comedy, hidden-camera segments, street magic performances, magical guest stars, and more, all presented and per-formed at a pace that would tire the leaping animated bunny that serves as the logo and mascot of the series.

At a recent appearance in the Palace of Mystery at the Magic Castle, Jorge bounces to the stage and welcomes the Hollywood audience to the show, humorously apolo-gizes for his lightly accented English, then launches into a card manipulation routine that quickly commands the crowd’s atten-tion. It is easy to see that Jorge is a consum-mate professional. He is a two-time com-petitor at FISM (in Lisbon and Dan Haag, 2000 and 2003) and winner of Monte-Carlo’s Golden Wand Award and the Sieg-fried & Roy SARMOTI Award at the Las Vegas Desert Magic Seminar in 2000. Still, the image Jorge projects is totally unpreten-tious; wearing a black suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie, he could be your brother or your cousin or, more likely, your best friend — who just happens to be a damn fine magician.

As it happens, Jorge Blass is even more than that. In addition to his magic awards and accolades, he is a national TV personal-ity in his native Spain, was a prize student at La Gran Escuela de Magia Tamariz in Madrid, has authored a book on illusion, and has invested a great deal of time, energy, and thought into exploring how the art of magic should be presented on television.

Jorge’s television career began unexpect-edly when, in 2000, he landed a simple com-mercial for DSL Cable. He was only twenty years old. The television spot showed Jorge, a professional magician for barely two years at that time, talking to the camera and per-forming a simple routine in which four ropes magically melded into one. (The four ropes represented four different types of data com-munication, all combined into one service.) It

was an original routine, created specifically for the commercial. No elaborate produc-tion, no rapid cuts, no raucous music. Jorge’s warmth and sincerity were so genuine that the DSL service sold out in two weeks, while the commercial was still airing. Eight years later, Jorge is still stopped on the street by TV viewers saying, “Hey! You’re the DSL guy!”

People could just as easily say, “Hey! You’re the Disney Channel guy!” because after the DSL spot, Jorge became a familiar face on the Spanish Disney Channel, per-forming magic as a regular on four different TV series, as well as making guest appear-ances on other shows and participating in a vast amount of interstitials to remind young viewers “what’s coming up,” sometimes with a magic trick as a kicker. During his time as the Disney Channel’s magician in residence, Jorge had the opportunity to entertain top stars who were visit-ing Spain to promote their Disney releases — Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Viggo Mortensen, Gloria Estefan, Vin Diesel — and all of these presenta-tions were shown on the network, which allowed Jorge to build an impres-sive show reel. The Dis-ney Channel engagement lasted for five years, and the audience familiarity Jorge garnered from it led to Nada X Aqui, an innovative magic variety show featuring Jorge and his “magic gang,” originally comprising comedy-magi-cians Luis Piedrahita and Jandro, along with sultry sleight-of-hand artist Inés.

Jorge’s first exposure to magic was as a curious six-year-old, watching a per-formance by Arturo Ascanio on one of Juan Tamariz’s television programs in 1992. “He was doing a Torn and Restored Card,” Jorge recalls today. “I was amazed. I remember I got a deck of cards from my father and I tried to repeat exactly what he did on TV. Move for move. I destroyed all of the cards; it was a card massacre. But that was the first time I realized, ‘Wow, this is magic.’” Jorge remembers asking for magic sets for Christmas, his interest growing more and more intense. When he was twelve, Jorge discovered Juan Tamariz’s School of Magic in Madrid. “I went there, I met his daughter Ana who was running the school, and I started the course. After five weeks, I got into the Society of Spanish Magicians, and I really started learning. I attended all of the con-ferences and lectures at the age of twelve or thirteen.”

Jorge was young, but he was dedicated to the art and a very fast learner. He saw Lance Burton perform his FISM-award-winning dove act on television and imme-diately became a fan. “For me, he is the greatest magician,” Jorge says of Lance. Jorge developed a similar manipulation act with candles, cards, and doves, incorpo-rating some new dove productions of his own invention that blindsided members of the Society of Spanish Magicians; they responded by granting him the Spanish National Magician Award at their conven-tion in 1995; Jorge was fifteen years old.

Jorge had not originally considered magic as a career. He started college major-ing in psychology; at the same time, he began earning income part time as a magi-cian. “I prepared a show, I started doing

private parties, all kinds of shows,” Jorge remem-bers. “The big change came in 1999. I was doing my manipulation act, but one night I was having dinner with Juan Tamariz, and he gave me an idea for a new approach. ‘It would be different to be onstage doing your act, and maybe produce your dove, but the dove is dead.’” It was a shock-ing concept originally, but Tamariz continued

to describe his idea. Jorge would perform a tribute to three masters of magic. The three masters inspire Jorge to learn his card manipulation, cigarette manipulation, and Linking Rings, and then, Tamariz con-cluded, “They give you the power to make the dead dove come back to life.”

Jorge loved the idea. He began develop-ing the act as a tribute to Cardini, Frakson, and Vernon. When Tamariz organized a spe-cial Magic of Spain show for Tannen’s Jubi-lee in 1999, Jorge Blass presented his tribute act for the first time. “Because I was a young magician, a nineteen-year-old guy, the theme worked perfectly,” he recalls of the first performance. “The thing with the dove was hard to watch; but not for the audience, for the magicians. They felt so bad.”

Two months after Tannen’s, Jorge went to Monaco to compete in the Monte Carlo Magic Stars Festival. It was a heady experience. “I met Kevin James there. I met Phelston Jones, and Scott & Muriel from Holland. I competed there with the tribute act and was very surprised when I won the Golden Magic Wand.” With typi-cal modesty, Jorge adds, “I think it was not because of the technique, but maybe

A Torn and Restored Card — I tried to repeat exactly what he did on TV... I destroyed all of the cards; it was a card massacre.

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because of the theme, the emotional con-nection — because it was not a regular act.” Jorge continued to perform the act in competition at FISM in 2000 and at the World Magic Seminar that same year, where he won the SARMOTI Award.

The three Masters of Magic were con-sistent from show to show and were easy choices for Jorge Blass. First, Frakson: “Because he was a Spanish magician and I admired him very much. He was well known in the United States, I think — I’m told when he won his Performing Fellowship from the Academy of Magical Arts in 1969, he went onstage and said, with all good humor, ‘I have to thank a magi-cian called Frakson,’ and he was impressed by the audience’s applause in response to his joke. People here did remem-ber Frakson.” Second, Cardini: “I loved his act and his way of magic. Things happen to him; he’s a victim of his own magic, but always in tipsy control.” Finally, Vernon: “No words. The greatest. I read all the books and Tamariz told me all the stories. Amazing. They are the three great masters to me, and what I liked about this act was that the audience, at the end, got a taste of magic history and culture.”

Between FISM 2000 and 2003, Jorge kept working on the tribute act and, he believes, eventually spoiled it. “I kept add-ing new things. Sometimes you work on an act and you change some things, and you don’t realize you are going in the wrong direction. I had fun at FISM in 2003. It was nice, but the act was better in 2000. So I left the act and never did it again.”

It was time for Jorge to develop the dream he’d been nursing since he was fifteen: a television show of his own. But unlike the American TV specials Jorge grew up watching, which featured a single magic personality such as David Cop-perfield or Lance Burton, Jorge patterned his show after the television stylings of his mentor, Juan Tamariz, whose Chan ta ta Chan series originally drew Jorge to the art. Instead of being a one-man show, it would be a show featuring a magic gang.

“I had the idea for bringing together a group of magic friends,” says Jorge. “I always wanted to do it that way. The thing is, I really felt that if I did the show by myself, it wouldn’t be as good. It’s much better with all the other people’s ideas, and I think for a big project like this, it’s a little

Two magic moments [above] from Jorge’s first show, back in 1992. Jorge Blass, the teenage magic star of the Spanish Disney Channel.

silly to do it by yourself. The really great thing is to be able to work on a project with good friends who have great talent.

“In Spain,” Jorge continues, “we had the Juan Tamariz show, Chan ta ta Chan [the expression Juan uses for his “magic words”]. That was 1992, but since that time there was no other magic TV show in Spain. We tried to do something new, something with a very young group of people who love magic and love TV and who know how to

do it the right way — to show the audience respect for magic and love of magic.”

First aboard were Luis Piedrahita and Roderigo Sopeña, who worked with Jorge in cre-ating the show’s format and continue to write the show today. Jorge had met Luis in 1999; in addition to being an out-standing close-up magi-cian and comedy writer, Luis had built a brilliant reputation as a stand-

up comedian with his series of monologues about little things everyone can relate to. The three-man team put together a presenta-tion that outlined the entire run of the series, a total of fifteen episodes.

Another of Jorge’s close friends was Antonio Camuñas, a businessman who had lived in New York for fifteen years working on Wall Street. Camuñas had been follow-ing Blass’ career at magic conventions and watched him blossom into a winning TV personality on the Disney Channel. “Anto-nio’s not a professional magician; he loves magic. He’s a professional lover of magic,” Jorge smiles. “I met him ten years ago and we have a great friendship. I tell Antonio all my dreams and he always helps me. He told me, ‘You have to show this project to Jose Maria Irissari; he’s the best TV pro-ducer, he’s intelligent, and he has vision. He will see that you have talent connected with this project and great material.’”

Irissari is president of Notro Films, the company that produces Nada X Aqui. According to Blass, Jose Maria was imme-diately enthusiastic about the concept. “He told me, ‘Yeah, we’re going to try it; I don’t know what TV network, but let’s try.’” Jorge placed the program in the hands of Irissari, who began pitching it to various potential buyers, large and small. Jorge, Luis, and Roderigo continued working on individual projects during this time, but nothing was moving forward for the TV show. “We never even did a pilot, because the network didn’t ask for one,” Jorge

I really felt that if I did it by myself, it wouldn’t be as good a show. It’s much better with all the other people’s ideas.

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recalls. “For one year, everything stopped. Everything was written, but it was not the moment. You know, sometimes you have to wait; it’s not the right time. But we got the call one day from Notro Films and they told us, ‘Channel 4 wants to do it!’”

Of course, this was just the beginning. Jorge and his creative team had sold the concept of Nada X Aqui, but they also insisted on being in control of the format. “Sometimes when you’re doing televi-sion, it’s so difficult to work with the TV people,” Jorge explains. “Not because they have nothing to say creatively, but because they don’t understand the concept of magic on TV and how audiences will react to it. Our concept from the begin-ning was that the three of us — me, Luis, and Roderigo — would be the directors of the show. We would take care of the entire process, from the beginning brainstorming sessions, through the shooting, to the edit-ing at the end. We wanted control in order to show the magic the way we wanted it to appear on TV.” Fortunately, the production team at Notro Films was indulgent of the magician-directors’ demands. Seasoned TV crews were sometimes amazed at the con-volutions Jorge and the team went through

to set up a single shot. Hidden-camera sequences frequently took as long as two days to shoot. Throughout the process, Jorge relied on his friend Juan Tamariz for advice and guidance. “He is my idol,” Jorge proclaims. “It was great to work with him and get him back to TV.”

In addition to the inspiration from Tama-riz, Rodolfo Dellibarda came aboard as the magical prop and illusion builder. “He built every trick from the smallest to the big ones,” says Jorge. “He’s very creative.” And very fast, because the Nada X Aqui series kept Rodolfo’s workshop humming 24 hours a day during production, building effects that were needed immediately and adapting others to the routines set by the writers and directors. Rounding out the creative team the first year were magic consultants Mago Antón, Román García, and Kiko. Davo and Ivan Santacruz were the stage assistants who provided support to all of the magicians who appeared on the show.

Readers who remember the old Dick Van Dyke Show — a TV series on which the characters of Rob, Buddy, and Sally exchanged banter in the writers’ room of a fictional television show — will be able to easily relate to Jorge’s magic gang on

Nada X Aqui. In every episode, a quartet of magical entertainers performed for one another and for audiences in the studio and on location. Studio sequences were shuffled together with street magic presentations and hidden-camera segments, each featuring one or more of the starring quartet — Jorge, Jandro, Luis, and Inés. Viewers could never be quite certain what would happen next, but they knew they’d enjoy it because the performers were so likeable. It was easy for people watching the show to become caught up in the enthusiasm the performers showed for one another and for magic. “That was our objective,” says Jorge. “We relied on our different personalities. Also, every four minutes there was a new thing coming; if you didn’t like one magician’s presentation, in four minutes, Inés appeared, or Jandro, and then perhaps we did something together. It’s not as boring as a one-person show. It’s always new and exciting.”

In addition to devoting attention to tasks such as writing, performing, and directing, Jorge and his team sought out talented guest performers for the show. Among the guest stars in the first season were Mago Antón, Román García, Miguel Angel Gea, Mike Caveney, Tina Lenert, and

Luis, Inés, Jandro, and Jorge with spray cans, shooting a promo for the show.

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Juan Tamariz. Jorge expresses his gratitude: “In the first season, we didn’t have a big budget. So we said to our magician friends, ‘We’re putting together a show, would you appear?’ And they agreed! There were many magicians who helped us, and we owe them many thanks.”

Luis, Roderigo, and Jorge cast the original Nada X Aqui magic gang. Luis and

Jorge were, of course, an integral part of the show and the gang, with Luis providing his razor-sharp wit and close-up skills, and Jorge doing stage magic and close-up and serving as principal host, the link to all the other magicians on the show. Jandro, who performed physical comedy magic on the program, has been a close friend of Blass’ since 1994. “Jandro does magic with great humor, like Mac King humor, Dave Wil-liamson humor. I asked him to take care of all the material for the show,” remembers Jorge. “I needed someone to take on the part of magic consultant for the first season, and Jandro stepped in and developed ideas for every one of us. We all thought of ideas, but he was the one who took care of organizing all of the material. And when we had the fifteen episodes all ready, he assured us that there would be no repetition or duplication and that all of the magic was great. He’s a great magician and a great thinker.”

Then came Inés, who brought not only a strong magical presence, but an undeniable sex appeal to the show. “She is so beauti-ful,” says Jorge. “We wanted to have a lady in our gang, but we didn’t want to have her there just for the sake of being a lady,

you know? We wanted to have a lady there because she deserved to be there.” Another female magician was considered briefly for the role, but Inés was a delightful surprise to the producers because of her talent and ver-satility. “Inés surprised us in the first season. In TV, you have to rehearse very fast. You may receive a trick and in two weeks you have to shoot it. Inés did very difficult stunts with threads, levitations, and complex close-up magic, and she did them perfectly. I think she performs great close-up magic. She really deserved to be there.”

Once the series was cast, the gruel-ing production schedule started almost immediately. According to Jorge, the team did “two months of preproduction, then four months of shooting.” The show was produced in segments, with each type of segment prepared and produced in a block. Street-magic segments were the first to go before the cameras, taking up a month of the shooting schedule. Then followed the hidden-camera scenarios, which in some cases required some extreme make-up or costume challenges. Finally, the studio segments were taped, with the studio audi-ences and the guest stars. The schedule

Juan Tamariz visits the set of NXA. [Below] Checking the footage with Rick Merrill at the Magic Castle.

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was tight; the first episode aired fifteen days before shooting was completed on the whole season. Blass considered that an advantage, because it allowed the series to air exactly as he had envisioned it, without any real network interference. “Ninety-five percent of the material was shot before the first episode was aired,” he says, “and that’s great, because then the TV networks can’t change the material; it’s already done. We shot it like a puzzle and then put the pieces together in the editing room. It was very intense work, but our persistence paid off. People in Spain loved the show and they gave us great ratings on Saturday nights at 9:30 — in Spanish primetime! It was awesome for the show, for magic, and for the magic fans.”

Some of the best moments of Nada X Aqui, judging purely by audience response, were the ones in which the audience had the chance to see the entire magic gang interact-ing as a group of friends. The Christmas holi-day programs, for instance, always opened with a silent magic routine by Jorge, Jandro, Luis, and Inés. One special started with a charming milk-and-cookie manipulation rou-tine, in which each performer urged another to fill his or her glass with milk, and no mat-ter what size glass they held, the milk was always the exact amount necessary to fill the next vessel to the brim. Another year featured a choreographed appearing lights routine set to the tune of Leroy Anderson’s classic nov-elty composition “The Typewriter.” The rou-tine was precise and sharply coordinated, and the fun and enthusiasm registered by each magician in the gang was contagious, maybe because they were all genuinely surprised that they were able to carry it off. “The amaz-ing thing,” Jorge remembers, “is that we rehearsed it in one day!”

Each season’s opening episode also featured a dramatic effect performed by the entire cast. For example, in the first episode of the first season, Jorge and the gang caused their traveling van to appear in the middle of a vacant parking lot. It was a Franz Harary effect, the first time it was ever performed in Spain. “We did it so fast,” Jorge enthuses. “We produced the truck in six seconds, where other magicians took ten or twelve seconds. We worked hard and got it really clean.” The first epi-sode of season two featured Jorge speaking to the camera, walking out into a com-pletely empty football stadium. He showed the viewers at home a low table, with clear views under, over, and around. In a clas-sic Nada X Aqui “secuencia sin cortes” (sequence without cuts), Jorge stood atop the table while holding a foulard and — bam! — the entire cast was suddenly posed next to him.

Although he’d probably be the last to admit it, Jorge Blass’ easygoing personal-ity and positive energy not only made him the perfect emcee for the program, it provided the inspiration required to hold the extremely disparate elements of the production together. One guest star who appeared on Nada X Aqui in its first season was award-winning magician Tina Lenert, who helped Jorge coordinate talent for the series’ US location shoot in its third year. “What’s so admirable about Jorge,” Tina says, “is that even being in charge of all this, he’s the calmest person you could ever meet. I don’t know how he was doing it. Everything was always under control, and I’m thinking, he’s 28 now. He’s just 28! He’s just one of those guys who has the ability to get people to really want to coop-erate with him.”

Jorge has an answer for this, too, and typically, he credits someone else. “I learned this from Tamariz,” he says. “And he learned it from Paul Daniels. Tamariz was appearing on Paul Daniels’ television show, and a lot of people were demanding Paul’s attention, saying, ‘We have a prob-lem, our guest is not coming!’ Paul would reply, ‘No problem, no problem. Be happy. We’ll get someone.’ And when Tamariz was doing his shows and when we were doing ours, we always tried to keep that in mind. In a project like this, there are a lot of wor-ries every day — we don’t have the right location for shooting, we don’t have this material, we are waiting for a trick that has to be here for rehearsal and we don’t have it. The only way to get through that is posi-tive thinking. Be calm and keep working so we can get through the problems.”

The success of Nada X Aqui’s first season had Channel Cuatro urging Jorge and his team to do another season. As all variety artists know, television has a vora-cious appetite for new material. “Your professional repertoire is gone in the third week,” Jorge observes. The team stalled the network for a while, brainstormed some ideas, and then realized that they could take advantage of the FISM in Stockholm in 2003. “We came up with the idea of going to FISM and shooting some inter-national magicians there. For the second season, we created a new section of the show called ‘Magic of the World.’” This allowed the team to capture a few minutes of original and innovative magic that they did not have to create. But they did need to tape it, and a Japanese TV network had the exclusive right to broadcast the competition itself. So, once again, Jorge and his team began dealing directly with magicians they knew who planned to attend the interna-tional event. “We got great magicians in

the second season,” Jorge recalls. “We got Paul Daniels; that was — wow — like a dream. We got Norbert Ferré, we got Finn Jon doing his Tie-Charming routine; we got Roberto Giobbi.” Various production loca-tions were chosen near the FISM site for the rapid shooting schedule. An atmospheric set was built in the bar at a nearby hotel for all the close-up shows, with room for an appreciative audience. For Chicago magi-cian Arthur Trace’s Modern Art routine, the modern art section of a Stockholm art gallery was selected. Finn Jon performed his elegant magic in an outdoor setting. “It was great because Finn Jon’s magic was so pure; there was no stage, no backdrop, nothing artificial — just the very natural surround-ings of the park.”

The second season also featured, in its fifteen one-hour episodes, more delightful performances by the regular magic gang.

The Appearing Van, from the shows first season. Jorge’s Linking Finger Rings. Jorge makes the linked rings float.

Jorge Blass’ Favorite Magic Moments From Nada X Aqui

The Appearing Van (Season 1, Episode 1)

We made our transportation van appear from nowhere, in an empty outdoor parking lot, thanks to the creativity of Franz Harary. I believe we accomplished this stunt faster than any pre-vious magician, and it looked great.

Cell Phone in Helicopter (Season 2, Episode 3)We visited an outdoor park where a model aircraft club

regularly flies their gasoline-powered, remote-controlled min-iature helicopters. One of the spectators gave me his personal cell phone, on which we put a sticker for him to sign. I cov-ered the phone with a handkerchief and threw it through a newspaper-covered hoop with a mini-copter hovering in the distance beyond. The phone tore through the paper and, a sec-ond later, one of the model helicopters approached us with the marked cell phone dangling from a rope beneath it. All in one continuous shot!

Funeral (Season 2, Episode 4)For a hidden-camera segment, we faked a funeral in a real

church. I was in make-up as the dead guy, Jandro posed as the priest, the widow was Inés, and Luis played the deceased’s brother. Luis had Inés in tears with his memorial speech in front of the people who were attending the service. For the grand finale, Jandro and Luis covered the “body” with a white cloth, and as our “priest” started praying, the body started rising, floating in mid-air. Then the priest realized it and made it disap-pear, Asrah-style. People didn’t know what to do or say. We didn’t either!

Car Crusher Escape (Season 2, Episode 3)We ran teasers for this through the entire episode. First, from

a remote location, Jandro displayed a miniature of me, shackled “me,” put “me” in the trunk of a toy car, and crushed it in a vice to show Luis, Inés, and the audience what to expect from my death-defying escape attempt. At the end of the episode, after a number of location interviews, we did it for real. I was locked inside the car trunk and my wrists were shackled through two holes in the trunk lid. The car was lifted into a car-crusher machine and was completely destroyed. People could watch me struggling to escape until the last second. Then I reappeared in the middle of the live location audience to their astonishment and applause.

Graffiti Street Prediction (Season 3, Episode 4)I freely chose a woman in downtown Madrid and asked

her to think of her favorite place in the world, imagining a city, hotel, and what time she’d like to arrive there. She wrote it all on a paper and sealed it in an envelope, and we began to walk. When we turned the corner, there was a huge wall with a big graffiti mural painted on it — of the city she had selected, the hotel, the woman herself, and a huge clock with her predicted arrival time. She was wearing the same outfit, the same hairstyle. And inside the sealed envelope she found a photograph of the wall painting. We did this in a three-minute, continuous shot, and we will always remember her reaction. She was truly excited and will never forget that magic.

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These performances included many of Jorge’s favorite moments from the show [see sidebar facing page]. Inés contributed more close-up and street magic, including a clever routine in which a marked coin appeared inside a beer can. Jandro visited a zoo and attempted to demonstrate a ring-on-rope routine to a cage filled with live mon-keys that grabbed at his props like frustrated children. Luis demonstrated more impec-cable coin work and Jorge performed a coin assembly routine, but rather than coins he used live turtles!

For the third season, illusionist Yunke was also brought in. It was an inspired addition, as Yunke’s large-scale magic, whether performed inside or outside the studio, gave added scope to Nada X Aqui, as did a new fea-tured segment. “For the third season,” says Jorge, “we decided to come to America, and to hire Gaetan Bloom and Juan Tamariz as consultants. I think we came up with some great ideas for TV.” Some of the new “Magic from America” segments were shot at the Magic Castle, with Rick Merrill, Tina Lenert, Mike Caveney, and Christopher Hart participating. David Williamson and John Carney were recorded at the Caveneys’ home. And segments with Lance Burton, Mac King, Jason Byrne, and Nathan Bur-ton were shot in Las Vegas. Jorge, who has just joined the Academy of Magical Arts, is pleased that the Castle could be featured on the show. “The Magic Castle is well known in Spain now because of the show. So now people who live in Spain will look forward to coming to the Castle.” He also acknowl-edged that Tina Lenert was “our best pro-ducer here.”

Whether showcasing guest magicians or presenting its talented cast in original vignettes, Nada X Aqui presented magic on television in a way that respected the traditions of the art, yet allowed for the contemporary vision of its creators. One of the reasons for the show’s success may be because of its refreshingly honest approach. “Television is another language; it is not like life,” Jorge explains. “A coin can be as big as an elephant on the screen, so every-thing changes on TV. What we think is that you have to be fair all the time. What you do always has to be able to be seen live. The most difficult part of magic on TV is to give that sense of reality, to let the audience feeling that they are watching a real thing, not an edited thing.

“We think it’s not fair to do magic for the camera and have an audience watch-ing the secret and faking their reaction. Every reaction in Nada X Aqui was real. If there was a situation where the audi-ence could learn the secret if they were on location with us, we shot that sequence without an audience.

“We learned from our master, Arturo Ascanio, that magic is the difference between the initial situation and the final

situation. So we wanted to be clear with every shot — if you put a coin in your hand, that’s the initial situation. In ordinary TV, you would change the shot to give rhythm and dynamics to the sequence. But to us, that ruins the magic. We wanted to maintain the same shot, from the time we put the coin in the hand until it disap-pears. So the initial situ-ation and final situation are in the same shot.

That is what we set out to do.”Since the show’s debut in 2004, every

episode of Nada X Aqui has begun with the following titles: “En este programa, no se realizan trucos de cámara… no se utilizan efectos especiales… no hay compinches.” In English: “In this program, there is no use of camera tricks… no use of special effects… and no stooges.” For Jorge Blass and his magic gang, the classic rules still apply, and they have led a talented gang of magicians to great success.

This summer, Jorge has been taking part in a six-week seminar at the American Academy of Dramatic Art in Hollywood. For him, it’s an opportunity to cleanse his mind and renew his creativity, and it’s exciting. “We have classes about move-ment, voice, and speech, as well as sing-ing, improv, camera techniques, and many other things,” he enthuses. “The teach-ers are Hollywood professionals, casting directors, and choreographers.” Although he has done some acting for TV, Jorge is not interested in pursuing a career as an actor. “I just want to learn how they think and what they do, then apply this to my magic. I think it is interesting to meet peo-ple from the theater and other arts, and talk and share techniques — not secrets, but experiences.”

And will Nada X Aqui return? “This format has had great success,” Jorge says, “but I think it’s already done. We want to leave it at the right point, not to continue and spoil the work. I want to work with

my friends again and keep working in a new format.

“For myself, I would like to prepare my own one-man show for the theater. I don’t want to do a regular magic show; I want to do a dramatic magic show, like the old Fu Manchu shows, where theater and magic combine. And it’s not just one magician, but an entire company. Maybe like a Broad-way musical, but with magic.

“I would put it together both ways, tele-vision and a live show. You always need TV to fill the theater with people, and I really think TV gives you the fame to do the things you really want to do. What I want to do is live shows — communicating with people.”

Communication with an audience is a gift Jorge Blass possesses in abundance, and with that magical talent, there’s little doubt that “nothing here” will soon develop into “something new.” u

We learn from our master, Arturo Ascanio, that magic is the difference between the ini-tial situation and the final situation.

The Car Crusher Escape: Jorge locked in the trunk, the car is compressed, and Jorge reappears.