by Hazel Flynn
Dad waited until we were alone to let his feelings rip. He was really angry now. No-one knew why the electronic system controlling the rotation had failed, but it was obvious to him how near I had been to a critical injury. He said with force, ‘This is too much, it’s just getting stupid now. These risks are too high.’ It was hard to argue with him when I could still picture the arrow hurtling past me. Even so, I’ll confess that when a bit of time had gone by I broached the subject of trying to get the stunt ready to perform onstage in a touring show. Dad could not believe I was even contemplating it. I stubbornly persisted anyway. But no matter what John and I tried we could not bring it back within the acceptable risk range, so reluctantly I finally had to admit defeat and permanently retire Point Blank, to Dad’s immense relief.
Shev Wanigatunga
MY INSPIRATIONS
WALT DISNEY
When I was a kid my whole family used to gather around the television set at Nonna Elisa’s on a Saturday night to watch The Wonderful World of Disney. All kinds of Disney programs were aired, including nature documentaries and feature films, but my favourites were the cartoons. That’s because normal rules don’t apply in cartoons, which take you to strange and wonderful worlds where anything can happen. I couldn’t get enough of them. They’re still something I gravitate towards, which is why to this day the showreel that opens my stage show begins with a cartoon.
As I got older I read up on Walt Disney and learned all about how he was inspired by magic and magicians and how he pioneered cartooning, creating and building a whole industry on his passion and creativity and brilliance. He turned something that other people dismissed as silly and throwaway drawings into an empire. Cynics looked at the sketches for his early characters and saw nothing more than ‘little drawings for kids’, but to Disney they were part of an all-encompassing vision about the future of entertainment. He harnessed the power of many, many gifted artists under his direction and made his vision a reality. Then he expanded it beyond animation into live-action films and theme parks and more. It was a real thrill to visit Disneyland for the first time when I was nineteen and I walked around there with Walt’s achievements very much on my mind.
The inspiration I take from him is to not accept conventional limitations that would box you in, but instead to follow your passion as far as possible. I also relate to the fact that he could never have got where he did without his older brother Roy, who was as gifted at business as Walt was at creative pursuits.
So much had happened already and 2013 was only halfway over. Ahead of me lay PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHALLENGES AND TRIUMPHS AND REWARDS BEYOND EVEN MY BIG DREAMS.
Rob was busy overseeing the cutting together of all the material we had shot for the three The Magic, The Mystery, The Madness TV specials: the big escape stunts, the illusions and mentalism of the theatre show, close-up magic on the street and in bars and the casino, and some other cool location pieces including on a car racetrack and in a skate park. Plus there was a very special visit back to my old school in Glen Waverley, where I had a lovely reunion with my Year 8 homeroom teacher, who will always be Miss Sollier to me, and performed a levitation that left the intimate audience amazed.
The shows were set to air in late August, early October and November but I couldn’t spend much time in the editing suite this time around because I had two mammoth tasks ahead of me: competing on Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) and mounting The Magic, The Mystery, The Madness (MMM) stage show tour, presented by the massive international promoter Live Nation to coincide with the MMM TV specials.
Starting in late August there was to be four weeks’ training for DWTS. The show itself would run from the beginning of October with an initial all-in show and then one contestant would be eliminated every week until the finale at the end of November. If I made it past week three my MMM stage show would overlap the rest of the season, beginning as it did in Wollongong on 12 October and ending in Adelaide on 30 November.
I also had my first magic kit to get ready. I’d been approached to see if I wanted to put together a collection of tricks and how-to instructions for kids keen to learn magic. I loved the idea. It was something I’d wanted to do for a long time and I knew exactly how it should be. Everything in it had to be well thought-out and high quality so that every child who got the kit would be blown away.
It was hard to see how there were going to be enough hours in the day to cover all these bases but I was up for the challenge. Bring it on, I thought.
There was certainly no mucking around with DWTS. Contestants don’t know until they walk into the dance studio who their partner will be. They have to be a height match and be of the opposite sex, but beyond that it could be any of the show’s professional dancers. You walk in, say hello and get straight to work. My partner turned out to be Jessica Raffa, a lovely and talented person who had toured the world in the hit dance show Burn the Floor. There was no ‘get to know you’ chat over a cup of tea. With the cameras rolling, Jess put me through my paces that first meeting, getting a sense of what I could do. I found that despite my ease working with my assistants onstage I was self-conscious at first about having to hold a stranger so closely. But the concentration required was so intense that within thirty minutes I’d forgotten about all of that.
People sometimes think I breezed through DWTS because I’d been dancing since I was a kid and dance onstage during my own shows. But other than some awkward school PE sessions I’d never done partner dancing and that is a very different thing to what I do. Jess was a good teacher and I picked things up fairly quickly, but even so I was relieved when we opened the card revealing what type of dance we’d be doing first and it was contemporary, since that was the closest match to my existing skills.
The show was performed in front of an audience and broadcast live and I was surprised how nerve-racking it was standing at the side of the stage waiting to go on. But we got through it so well that not only did we win round one easily, we got nines from three of the judges, musical stars Todd McKenney and Adam Garcia and professional dancer Kym Johnson and, from dance coach and former champion Helen Richey, a perfect ten — something which had apparently never happened before in the opening round. That felt great, but I knew I still had a long way to go to learn less familiar steps and there is nowhere to hide when you’re out on that dance floor.
Among the other competitors there were some impressively high achievers in their chosen fields, including gold medal-winning Olympians Steve Hooker and Libby Trickett, but I knew right from the start that the ones to beat were singing/dancing/acting triple threats Tina Arena and Rhiannon Fish, who looked fantastic from the very first number.
My second dance, the following week, was the trickier Viennese waltz. Jess and I were making good progress training for it when, just a few days out from show-date, I got a call telling me she had injured her back badly enough to have been admitted to hospital.
I went straight to visit poor Jess, who had been diagnosed with a bulging disc and told to stay off her feet for several weeks. Competitive dancer Sriani Argaet took her place and we threw ourselves into rehearsals. Like Jess, Sriani is a good teacher and an easy person to be around, but it was tricky after more than a month of intensive training with one partner to switch to another who moves differently. We did reasonably well (very well, considering the circumstances), coming third that week.
By now it was mid-October and the rehearsals for the MMM stage show were well underway. Unbelievably, in the lead-up to the tour starting I was also still fitting in corporate gigs. Most contestants train eight hours a day for DWTS. I was lucky if I got five or six hours and could only do that because Sriani flew around the country to meet me. I’d have a corporate show in, say, Brisbane that finished by 9.30 p.m. Sriani would be there afterwards and we would go straight to work in whatever space we’d been able to organise. If the gig was part of a conference in a hotel it might be an empty banquet room or a gym (rarely did we have the luxury of a mirror). We’d work until
1 a.m. The next day there would be a flight back to Melbourne where I would go straight to MMM rehearsals. When that was done I would head to the dance studio for several hours’ work with Sriani.
Our Round 3 dance was the cha-cha-cha. I didn’t love it, and considering how little time we’d had to work on it I was fine with us coming fourth. In the week leading up to round four of DWTS my MMM tour started. Sriani continued to fly out to meet me, only now we were working on basketball courts or whatever else was nearby in snatches between the show set-up and the night’s performance. We still managed to do a good enough job of our paso doble to come second by just a point to Rhiannon and her partner.
The following week there was another challenge: Jess was declared fit to return to DWTS. I was really pleased for her and it was absolutely right that she come back but it did throw a curve into preparing for the rumba and I wasn’t surprised to come fourth.
Just as Sriani had done, Jess flew around to wherever I was performing so we could practise. DWTS was rating so well that the producers decided to put in a couple of extra shows which would go out live on a Sunday, adding one more complication to the mix — the new three-day turnarounds between shows were murder.
Round 6 was the tango, a dance that’s almost aggressively sexy. I found it great to perform, putting us into the winning spot that week. The following show we came third with a ‘dance marathon’ of different steps. Round 8 was my least favourite dance, the samba, which put us in the middle of the pack. By the start of Round 9, there were only five competitors left and amazingly, despite being pulled in so many directions including being right in the middle of a national tour, I was one of them. I did pretty well that week. Not as well as Tina and Rhiannon, who each had a round of perfect scores (a ten from each judge), but a lot better than Steve, who was eliminated.
The first two MMM TV specials had aired by this point, getting a huge response, and the third was about to be broadcast. The magic kit had been released and was flying out of the stores and generating huge interest. One way and another there was a lot of demand for media interviews.
Over a four-day period somewhere in there I did fifty-seven interviews, talking about my own TV special, DWTS, my national tour, the magic kit or sometimes a combination of all four. While Tina, Rhiannon and Libby and their partners were merrily chatting in the corridors I’d be huddled in a corner wearing my phone earpiece, trying not to lose track of what this particular radio interview was about.
There was not a minute of free time in my day for months on end. DWTS had a rehearsal on Tuesdays before the broadcast. Sometimes on the Monday Jess would fly interstate to meet me, we’d snatch a few hours’ practice, then I would head off to do the night’s performance and she would return to Melbourne. The next day while I was on a plane on my way back she would front up to the DWTS rehearsal and have to go through the routine alone. I’d get to the television studio, we’d have a quick confab so she could remind me of the routine, and then it was time to get into costume ready to go on. I was working so relentlessly that even though I was eating well, five kilograms of weight dropped off me and people starting commenting on how gaunt I looked.
Cosentino family collection
But we were so close to the end now: only one more round before the finale. The two dances Jess and I had to do were a disco number and the Argentine tango. I was overjoyed to get a perfect score for the tango and be among the three grand finalists. Most commentators were sure either Tina or Rhiannon would win. They were both extremely strong competitors but I thought I still had a chance.
Two nights before the DWTS finale I was live at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre on the second-last stop of the MMM tour. With so much already going on it’s hard to believe that something even more exciting could happen, but it did: the International Magicians’ Society’s Tony Hassini stepped onstage before the first show and presented me with my second Merlin Award. Getting Most Original Magician the year before had been wonderful but, as Tony explained, this award was the best of the best, the IMS’s highest accolade, International Magician of the Year, which in 2012 had gone to Criss Angel. The audience went wild. It was a huge honour and I was filled with joy and immense gratitude. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t even stay and have dinner with Adam and Tony Hassini after the show: I had to race to meet Jess and practise for DWTS.
Each couple in the finale had to do three dances. Jess and I got the dreaded samba plus cha-cha-cha and freestyle. We gave it everything we had and I was rewarded with the closest thing to a perfect score all night, getting a thirty-nine for the freestyle, with Todd McKenney giving me a nine to the three other judges’ tens. Todd had been increasingly tough on me as the season went on and I had to smile when he ’fessed up after our final dance that each week his mum would send him a text message saying, ‘Please be nice to Cos’.
Tina was eliminated, leaving Rhiannon and me as the last two standing. The judges’ scores were only part of determining the winner; viewer votes were also crucial. After some of the longest seconds of my life host Daniel MacPherson read out the winner and amazingly he said my name! Priscilla and my whole family were there and we celebrated into the night. I was ecstatic with the achievement and so happy that Jess had got the win she deserved after seven years on the show. As I said often, I would not have been holding that mirrorball trophy without her. She worked so hard and pulled the absolute best out of me. I felt extremely proud knowing that my chosen charity, the Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation, would benefit, with an undisclosed donation from the show plus all the attention I could generate by mentioning its excellent work at every opportunity.
As proud as I remain of the DWTS victory I harbour a frustration about it that’s like a pebble in my shoe: the knowledge that I could have been even better if I’d had time to devote to it. Why would I care about that, when I came first? Because while winning is awesome, my own internal measure of success is being the very best that I can be. That’s why if they ever come up with some kind of Champion of Champions DWTS I’ll be there in a shot to really test myself and see just how far I can go.
The MMM live tour finished just four days after DWTS. It too had been a triumph and I was incredibly proud of it. All eleven shows had completely sold out. No so long before I’d been washing my costume out in a motel sink after a school show. Now here I was with a full crew and two semi-trailers’ worth of equipment, one full of lighting, the other of props and other gear. I was performing in arenas, which is something that a magician had not done in Australia since the first David Copperfield show I’d seen two decades earlier. I felt I was doing justice to magic, the craft I loved so much but which had been written off by so many people. Now I’d proved once and for all that magic could be spectacular entertainment and that there was a huge audience out there for it.
Australia’s Got Talent had given me the foundations of a national profile and my own TV specials built on that. MMM Part One drew a capital-city audience of 1.02 million, giving Seven the ratings win for the night, Part Two did similarly well and despite Part Three going up against the much talked about finale of The Bachelor, it also performed strongly. In fact the average national ratings across the three parts was 1.3 million. DWTS broadened awareness even further. A lot of people who watched the show knew little or nothing about me as a magician when it began. They would come up to me in public and talk to me as a dancer first, which I found charming.
By the end of 2013 I had lost my anonymity completely. Even if I was just nipping out to the shop to get milk I was recognised. I made a couple of attempts to go Christmas shopping at Fountain Gate as I normally would, but each time there was an endless stream of people wanting to say hello or ask for a selfie and I left without getting what I needed. But even though it made some things trickier, I genuinely appreciated people’s interest in me. I’d worked long and hard to build an audience for my magic; being recognised in public was part and parcel of that. I will admit that I found it a bit strange when I’d be
waiting in line at the supermarket or queuing for airport security and someone would ask me to do a magic trick for them. I couldn’t help but wonder, if they spotted Russell Crowe did they ask him to give them a monologue?
The highs continued. In partnership with distributor Endemol Shine, Seven put the MMM specials onto the international television market and got a huge take-up: Spain, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines . . . there was interest from all around the world. Overseas markets generally dub English-speaking programs rather than subtitling them and it’s funny watching myself speaking fluent Spanish or Hindi. So far the specials have been sold to forty countries and they’ve been seen by an extraordinary 350 million people. I find it hard to get my head around those numbers. They’re humbling and thrilling. All those visits to the emergency department were worth it!
Cosentino family collection
The ‘Master Illusions by Cosentino’ magic kit had also proved to be a big hit and not just in toy departments; in fact, it was retailer Australian Geographic’s best-selling item of the year and, they told me, one of their top five selling items of all time. Total sales through all outlets topped 30,000. It meant a lot to me to think that kids out there who were shy or unconfident like I had been might learn something from the kit that helped them walk a little taller.
Aware of my successes, Criss Angel got in touch. He was keen to talk about working together. I’d been approached several times about appearing in ensemble magic shows including ‘The Illusionists’ and had always declined but I really admired Criss and felt we shared an aesthetic sensibility so I was keen to meet him. We set a date to talk about the possibilities.