There are only so many ways you can make cards appear and disappear at your fingertips before your audience gets the point and it’s time to move on. As a result, contemporary card manipulators who are interested in building upon the experience must either create or adopt sequences that push the envelope. One way to accomplish this is to transition from regular cards to jumbo cards during the manipulation, which raises the stakes on all your subsequent productions and vanishes, even if they resemble those done just moments before.

With the work of Richard Ross as his jumping-off point, F.I.S.M. award-winner Cyril Harvey has been developing his own jumbo card manipulation for nearly 30 years. This DVD shares the results of his study, a collection of techniques he has put into practice that includes flourishes, transfers, steals, vanishes, appearances, color-changes and more. In addition, he imparts some of his work with poker-size cards, a mix of both adapted and invented techniques, and performs (but does not teach) his bizarre “Spinning Tops” act from F.I.S.M.

It’s unlikely that every move shown here will appeal to you - I found a few to be jerky and unconvincing - but in all fairness, the camera may have been too close for some of these techniques, and those that didn’t stand up to such unflinching scrutiny might look fine in a theater setting with a more traditional distance between the performer and his audience. The rest of the moves range from solid to striking (with one highlight being a production of three jumbo fans, one in each hand and a third that appears between the forearms), and all are very clearly explained (I should mention that I provided the English voice-over for Cyril’s French discourse).

Given the dearth of information on the subject, anyone interested in adding jumbo card manipulation to his act would have little choice but to start here. Fortunately, this DVD is better than that - Cyril and Guy Camirand worked hard to make it a lasting resource, and I think they succeeded.

David Acer