✦ Golden Grolla Award 2018

Shimada

The master of doves and parasols

Haruo Shimada left Japan as a young man with a suitcase of props and became one of the most influential stage manipulators in the history of magic. In Australia he refined the dove act that made him famous, and with his wife Deanna he conquered the great stages of the world, from television variety shows to the showrooms of Las Vegas, where for years he was one of the most requested specialty acts.

His masterpiece is the parasol act inspired by Japanese theatre: silk parasols blooming from nowhere, one after another, in a crescendo of colour and precision that ends in a stage full of open umbrellas and a single unforgettable image. With that act Shimada did something historic, bringing Japanese aesthetics into Western magic and opening the road that generations of Asian manipulators have walked since. The greatest performers of the East consider him a founding father.

Masters of Magic honoured him with the Golden Grolla in 2018, in Saint-Vincent, celebrating a master whose grace and discipline set a standard manipulators still chase today.

Honoured by Masters of Magic among the legends who have shaped the history of magic.