My magic background is close-up card tricks at the Stampede Bar in Denver, working through Harmony Magic. These days I’m also learning more about communication, and I keep thinking about the space between what we say and how someone responds. Without discussing any methods, how do you work on the pauses in a performance? Do you rehearse them deliberately, or let the audience guide you? I’m interested in making the words feel like a conversation and giving people room to enjoy the moment. What helped you develop that timing?

I'm preparing to start work on my trousers. I wanted to use something I didn't need right now, so I stopped today and, for $8.00, picked up two pairs of trousers from a thrift shop. I bought one my size and the largest one I could find where the material matched to make the gimicks from. This should give me plenty of material to upgrade several pairs for performance.

Is there anything we shouldn't discuss openly in the discussion board? There are different parts of the academy that have different people accessing them. I don't want to over share anything I shouldn't in an open forum.

🌎 ENGLISH How much magic do you actually have ready to perform right now? Magic Beyond Tricks — Foundation 02: Build Your Magic Repertoire is now available inside the Classroom at Ruiz Magic Academy. ✨ In Foundation 01, we talked about being ready when opportunity comes. Now comes the next question: How do we actually prepare? In this Foundation, we begin by doing something simple — but extremely important: Make an inventory of your magic. The class introduces two essential lists: ✅ What I Can Perform Now ✨ What I Want to Perform The first is your current repertoire — material you could genuinely perform in front of an audience tomorrow. The second represents your future repertoire — techniques, routines, ideas and material you still want to develop. We also explore why it is important to organize your repertoire according to the type of work you do — close-up, parlor, stage, manipulation, mentalism, children’s magic, grand illusion, or whatever categories make sense for you professionally. 🎭 Because knowing many tricks does not necessarily mean having the right material ready for the right situation. One of the central ideas of this class is simple: Real progress is not how many secrets you know. It is how much material you have transformed into something you can truly perform. And instead of trying to finish everything at once, choose something. One routine. One technique. Five new minutes. Finish it — and move it from What I Want to Perform to What I Can Perform Now. That is real progress. 🎩✨ At the end of the class, I leave you with an exercise that will prepare us for Foundation 03, where we will begin classifying our repertoire into: Class A · Class B · Class C and start discovering which material should really become part of our show. Foundation 02 — Build Your Magic Repertoire Available now inside the MAGIC BEYOND TRICKS — FOUNDATIONS Classroom. Study · Practice · Create · Evolve Roger Ruiz ✦ ───────────────── ✦ 🌎 ESPAÑOL ¿Cuánta magia tienes realmente preparada para presentar ahora mismo?

🌎 ENGLISH We just reached 100 members inside Ruiz Magic Academy — and I want this milestone to mark the beginning of something new. ✨ As the Academy continues to grow, I want every member of this community — whether Standard or Premium — to have access to strong educational foundations that can help them grow as magicians and performers. That is why I am beginning a new FREE educational series for all Ruiz Magic Academy members: MAGIC BEYOND TRICKS — FOUNDATIONS This course will be released gradually, one Foundation at a time. The focus will not be on teaching individual tricks or secret methods. Instead, we will study many of the principles that I believe are essential for anyone who wants to move beyond simply knowing magic and begin developing as a complete performer: 🎩 Repertoire 🎭 Show structure ✨ Artistic development 🎥 Practice and rehearsal 👥 Performance experience 🎬 Stage presence 📚 Organization and preparation And today, we begin with: Foundation 01 — Be Ready When Opportunity Comes If the opportunity you have been waiting for arrived tomorrow… would you be ready? ✨ There is a big difference between knowing magic and being truly ready to perform magic. We can study techniques, books, methods and lectures for years and still discover that, when someone suddenly asks us for 15, 30 or 60 minutes of performance material, we do not actually have it prepared. That is where this Foundation begins. 🎩 In this class, we talk about transforming knowledge into real performance material: ✨ Learning while building repertoire 🎭 Turning techniques into complete routines 🎵 Thinking about presentation, music and structure 🎥 Recording and analyzing your work 👥 Testing material in front of real audiences 🔄 Refining it until it becomes something you can truly perform We also explore something I consider extremely important: Question what you learn. That includes what I teach you. Adapt techniques to your own hands, body and character. Experiment. Search for better solutions.