The Story of Visiona, continued

   The years between 1989-1997 were filled with nothing but MAGIC. We lived above the magic business, spent most of our time in it, traveled the world to magic conventions and the only people we knew were either magicians or somehow related to magic. Besides Manfred’s annual magic convention that he hosted himself, he added new events to his magic calendar and hosted Magic Days and a Magic Auction.

     In 1994, a magician friend named Kurt Gruener who also dabbled in film, brought some interesting items to the Magic Auction. He was acquainted with a 78 year old woman who was the daughter of deceased German magician, Alois Groasser (1800-1981) who also ran a cinema house in Mannheim. Her father had performed a 2 hour Magic Revue in his day with his wife and daughter Else as assistants. In those days, a magic performance was offered on the stage of the cinema before showing the film.

Personalities in the Magic Society

Magician Kurt Gruener

   Kurt had witnessed Alois Groasser’s shows and became infatuated with magic himself through the performances of the grand master whom he greatly admired.

     As part of Alois’ Magic Revue, one act was performed by daughter Else before the intermission, called “Visiona”, a skirt dance. Else began performing this skirt dance in 1930 when she was 15 years old, but stopped performing in the late 60’s. Of all the magical props and illusions in his collection, he always told Else, “The Visiona act must live on”. She kept the Visiona act with its projector, costume and all the technical paraphynalia stored in the cinema house for years where it sat untouched.  When Else was faced with a demolition of the age-old cinema house in 1994, she knew she had to part with her father’s magical props and illusions for good, but she wanted to keep her promise to her father that the Visiona show would live on.

Elsie, Alois Groasser and Else, around 1930

Else, around 1930 as Visiona

    Kurt brought us together and we helped her transport the illusions with crates and suitcases full of antique magic to be auctioned off at our Auction and Collector’s Day in Sindelfingen. Several collectors of magical apparatus had expressed interest to Else of buying the Visiona skirt dance props, but she didn’t want it to end up in a museum or on a shelf to be admired, but rather to live on stage. When Manfred and Kurt told me of this act, I couldn’t picture anything as beautiful as how they described it. I could only imagine some light and some colors and a costume moving with flowing movements but I couldn’t picture how this all came together. When we met in the old cinema house and she pulled out the wooden boxes of hand-painted glass sheets with gorgeous art-nouveau butterfly images, and the costume of white, I felt hypnotized by the treasure that lie before my eyes. We expressed our interest in bringing this art form to stages of today and I was speechless when Else agreed to sell it to us. Although we were still bound to Manfred’s magic business full time, we somehow felt that we had bought ourselves an insurance policy for the future.

Hand-painted images on glass

     Manfred was just as thrilled by the purchase as I since he had tried to book Else with the act in earlier years for his magic hands Kongress, but when her father died, she didn’t want to perform it any more. But on this day, she fulfilled two wishes, when she agreed to perform it at his convention one last time in her life at age 79.

     During the magic hands Night Club in January 1995, which was an elegant candlelight dinner for 1000 guests in the elegant ballroom of the Sindelfingen Convention Hall, Else performed one last time and received thunderous applause at the end of her performance.

  The performance was very nostalgic indeed, since Kurt stood behind the original projector and hand-operated the contraption, manually blending the hand-painted glass sheets from one image to the next. Showering Else with a huge bouquet of flowers on stage, Manfred and I personally thanked her. Else announced to the elite group of international guests in the audience that she is passing the act on to a lady that will perform it with heart and soul, Vicki Lewis-Thumm. A surprised hush went over the audience while a teary-eyed Vicki accepted the honor with Sylvia Schuyer from Holland doing emcee honors.

     Most of Alois’ props sold well at the Auction and some found a home in the Museum of Unterhaltungskuenst in Vienna run by Robert Kary-Kaldo. But the Visiona skirt dance was destined to “live again!”

     At first, the treasure was put off to the side with our full time schedule in the magic business. Spare time wasn’t something on our time table, so we had little chance to work on the act. But when things changed and Manfred realized he was reaching retirement age, our life changed practically overnight when he sold the business and hosted his 20th and last magic hands Kongress in January 1997. In the last year, I had been practicing on the small stage of his magic studio and Manfred converted all the nostalgic slides to modern slide stock and somehow we managed to find a pleasing choreography combined with the technical side of the projection and were ready to try our luck on stage. Having no idea whether anyone would like our freshly baked act or not, we sent a few video tapes to  some friends in the magic scene.

     Ron MacMillan in London was the first to call and wanted to book me for his upcoming magic convention show in the Palladium in December 1996. This show had international artists like Tina Lenert, Mike Caveney, James Dimmare, Debbie Daniels, Juliana Chen, Ali Bongo, Netcheporenko, Salvano, Fred Roby and more. Ron named me “The Magic Butterfly” in his program. This would be my debut in front of an audience of magicians, but one month later I would have my official debut on the same stage in Sindelfingen that Else had her last performance, and where Manfred would be celebrating an end to his magical career at his 20th and last magic hands Kongress in January 1997. This would be the end of one road in his life, but the start of a new one for me.

Vicki’s Debut as Visiona, the magic hands Kongress 1997, Sindelfingen

     With the end of Manfred’s magic career, Alois Groasser’s Visiona was reborn and I was finally able to perform a show that brings joy to audiences. Immediately after the Palladium Show in London and the debut in Sindelfingen, we were booked for a live TV show in Shanghai, China as part of a magic convention where they asked Manfred to be a judge of the contest along with Ali Bongo and Dale Salwak. Over 2 million viewers saw Visiona in China in April 1997.

     Maybe it was a dose of luck or just destiny, but my start as Visiona was like an easy launch whereas many artists have such a hard time getting started. Mike Caveney asked me in the Palladium if I’m starting at the top and working my way down. Well, I was just kind of thrown onto the stage like being thrown in water, and either you swim or drown. Or in my case, fly like a butterfly.

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