Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

UP HER SLEEVE: In the Cards

Chinese magician, now a Las Vegan, never knows where life will take her next

When magician Juliana Chen akes cards materialize, she likes to scatter them onstage rather than collect them neatly in a top hat. COURTESY PHOTO Chen takes advantage of her ballet background to create movement during her magic act. COURTESY PHOTO Chen's career got a boost when she won a world championship in magic in 1997, and received a trophy in the form of a caped magician. Photo by John Locher.

No onstage magic illusion can top the transformations that magician Juliana Chen, a new Las Vegas resident, has undergone in her personal life.

Chen, who specializes in sleight of hand, has won a slew of professional awards. She is the only woman, and only Chinese citizen, to win a world championship title from the World Congress of Magicians -- in 1997 in Dresden, Germany.

She also has a study full of other awards, bestowed by such entities as the Society of American Magicians, the International Magicians Society and the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

And when she moved into a gated townhouse here in November 2002 from her home in Canada, it was a cue she has selected Las Vegas as the staging ground for the next phase of her career. One day, Chen says, she'd like to have her own show here.

She also likes to keep her age a mystery. But based on biographical dates in articles about her, Chen is probably almost 40.

Headliner Lance Burton, a fellow magician, says he knew of Chen's work before he met her, which was about eight years ago. "She's a highly skilled card manipulator with a fascinating story," he says.

Chen was born into a family of modest means in China's Hunan province. Her father was a railroad worker. Chen was selected at age 10 by national officials to attend a prestigious residential arts academy.

She made the first cut based on looks, poise and basic coordination, she recalls. After an intensive three-month probation, recruits again were screened. Those who had made progress stayed on to train for positions in national performing companies.

Chen was among them, slotted to study ballet. It meant living apart from her family, but she was eager to perform.

She remembers coming home for visits dressed in her academy uniform, which was a coveted status symbol. "On the whole street, kids were opening their windows and looking at me," Chen says in accented English.

Because of a Communist purge that happened a decade earlier, circus performers were in short supply. So the authorities transferred Chen from a ballet track into the study of acrobatic skills. Soon, she began touring China as a circus juggler.

Specifically, she was a foot juggler. Chen would hang above the stage, suspended by her teeth, or lie on her back, twirling plates on long poles.

In 1982, she began touring internationally.

The applause was rewarding, but Chen says she could not forget her status as a virtual vassal to the Chinese government.

Performers could never carry their own passports, to reduce their chances of defecting. And when Chen attracted romantic attention from a male fan in Spain, she recalls, the troupe's security force began focusing on her. "Four guys (watched) me all the time, even when I go to the bathroom."

Because she knew security would be stationed in hotel rooms on either side of hers, she took to jiggling her door handle at odd times through the night, just to tease the guards. Each time she jiggled it, she could hear doors of adjacent rooms opening in an attempt to check on her.

Over time, Chen grew dissatisfied and worried. She had suffered three leg injuries, and the company's doctor was warning that if the health problems continued, she could be sidelined at an early age. "After 30 years old, I (might) not even be walking by myself," she recalls.

So she took to learning card tricks in her off time, in her hotel room, from a friendly troupe magician. Ordinarily, magic in China is not taught in national arts academies, she says, but within magician families, relative to relative.

Magic was a two-fold opportunity, Chen decided. Not only would it spare her weak legs, but it would also give her "face time" on stage. Foot jugglers show mostly the back of their legs, she explains, laughing.

Cards and pingpong balls were cheap and easy to transport, so they became her first tools. Eventually she presented her magic skills to the company's director, who approved, and changed the show to add her magic.

But Chen was yearning for something more than a lifetime as a circus performer. In 1988, she applied for and received a student visa to study English in Canada. With excitement, she obtained leave from the circus.

On her flight to Vancouver, holding her own passport, Chen recalls thinking, "I feel like a bird. I can fly."

Not knowing a word of English, she remembers feeling "stupid" in the beginning of her stay. "I can only read the children's books at the library."

While she studied English, she also was introduced to magic in the Western world. In China, magicians hoarded their secrets and equipment. In Canada, a friend took her to a magic shop that freely sold supplies and books.

"I didn't know (there were) soft balls" to do tricks with, Chen says. But practicing with hard pingpong balls actually forced her to develop superior technique.

She continued practicing, often with three mirrors set up to monitor and squelch her "tells," the body language that give away a move. Today, if she's doing a long program, she hides up to 800 playing cards on herself.

While Chen was in Canada, China's 1989 grass roots uprising at Tiananmen Square -- and government backlash -- took place.

The Canadian government was offering asylum to Chinese students living there. Chen says she called her circus company back in China to discuss the options. The manager told her to make her own decision.

She chose to stay. But because Chen notified her supervisors before making a choice, she says the Chinese government did not classify her as a defector. In fact, she has gone back to perform in China several times, and expects to tour there again in early summer 2004.

SaturdayNight, a Canadian magazine, details Chen's subsequent rise in magic circles. She is the cover story of its Summer 2003 issue.

At her unofficial Western debut at a 1988 meeting of the Vancouver Magic Circles, a local club of magicians, the magazine reports, "Chen had brought only her cards. At best, (the audience) was expecting a kiddie show. ... (But) she moved like a bird, arms outstretched, seemingly grabbing cards from thin air. The audience was slack-jawed. Whole decks burst into the air, as if her fingertips were hemorrhaging cards. ... It went from `ahh' to awe to thunderous applause."

After gaining Canadian residency, Chen worked in graphics at a Vancouver publisher, taking what magic engagements she could, such as at local festivals. Then she began performing solo shows in Europe -- eventually at sites such as the Princess Grace Theatre in Monte Carlo and the London Palladium -- and at such U.S. venues as Magic Castle Hollywood and Caesars Palace' Magical Empire in 1995.

In July, she opened for a week for Amazing Jonathan at the Flamingo Hilton. In mid-August she's off to Germany for two months of performing.

Her constant companion is Christina, an 11-year-old Yorkshire terrier.

"No dog, no show," is a requirement Chen says she puts in all her contracts.

Chen has a married sister and mother living in Vancouver, where she maintains a second home.

Chen's lifestyle, to date, of perpetual traveling has not allowed her to build an exclusive personal relationship with another person, she claims. "She's my daughter," Chen jokes, in reference to her dog.

Las Vegas is an ideal performing venue, according to Chen, although it currently has a surfeit of "circus" -- as in the Cirque du Soleil shows at Bellagio, TI and New York-New York, as well as the theme at Circus Circus.

But magic is another form of entertainment that, like the circus, does not depend on language. Foreign tourists and English speakers alike can enjoy it, she says.

"In the West, if you're good, you don't know what your life can be."

That's the mantra Chen told herself during her transformation, when she moved from acrobat to magician, and from China to Canada.

The mantra still applies. Who knows what she's got up her sleeve in Las Vegas, for her next transformation?