Welcome to Sentivia

Alright, let's break down who I am, or at least, who I am on stage. I'm Helder Guimarães, and I’m not your typical performer. I like to play with expectations and get people thinking differently.

I start by saying, “90 percent of everything is crap.” It’s not the most uplifting statement, I admit, but it’s a cornerstone of my philosophy. I believe we often settle for the first answer, the easiest solution, without exploring the deeper, more interesting possibilities. This concept, called Sturgeon's Law, isn't about being negative, but about acknowledging that most things, in any given field or situation, aren't going to be exceptional. I'm here to find and create the exception, to push past the 'crap'.

To get my point across, I begin my performance with some unexpected interactions. I toss a giraffe into the audience as a playful way to involve people in the moment. It's absurd, really, and deliberately so. I then ask the audience member who catches the giraffe to participate in a mind-reading trick with a card. They freely name a card, the 10 of hearts, and I reveal that I had it all along, emphasizing the randomness, and making a link to Sturgeon's Law. It's about creating a sense of 'how did that happen?' while also highlighting how easy it is to fall into patterns of predictability. I throw in some humor by playfully chiding the audience for the crazy reaction to the giraffe, it’s all part of the show, and I want to keep them on their toes.

My philosophy is that we often stop thinking too soon. I illustrate this with the simple example of folding a piece of paper with my weaker hand. The audience’s reaction is exactly what I anticipated, lack of interest because they are not thinking outside the box. But then, I show how small changes, like using a paper clip and a fist instead of fingers, and imposing a time limit can transform a mundane task into something fascinating. This shows how a different mindset can take a seemingly mundane process and turn it into something intriguing. I'm pushing them, and pushing myself, to see the potential within something that initially feels ordinary. The unexpected reveal of the 10 of hearts to highlight the fact that things can always change from the initial thought ties it all back to my earlier point about Sturgeon's Law.

Next, I shift to a story about a secret. This story is important because it gets to the heart of my performance. It's not really about the magic itself, but about the experience of witnessing it. I recount an experience where an old man made a bold claim, not to touch the deck of cards, and while he has a notebook, that is not my focus. My focus, is on the deck. I then get another member of the audience to play my role in the story of me picking cards. Their choices are seemingly free, but there’s a guided element. He goes through the steps of choosing a card, black, a spade, a high spade, and finally the king of spades, it feels like a completely free choice but then the number 17 is the chosen number. The reveal of the 17th card in the deck, which was not the king of spades, is unexpected and shows the audience that there is a deeper element to the story. This demonstrates that things are not as they seem. It’s that feeling of discovery that is important.

The story reveals that the old man had a notebook that held all the secrets, not of the card trick, but of sharing that secret and experience with another person. For me, those secrets are essential, not just for creating the illusions, but also for understanding why we are drawn to magic in the first place. I believe that we are defined by the secrets we keep and by the secrets we share. The sharing of this secret is what makes the old man’s act a memorable one.

I emphasize that amazing things happen all the time, if we put ourselves in the position to discover them. I use the giraffe again to get another member of the audience, a person who happened to have a dollar bill on him. This is part of that search for the amazing, it felt almost coincidental that they had a dollar bill on them at that moment, but those small coincidences can sometimes feel like real magic. I then have that member of the audience help me with a trick involving a signed dollar bill and a paper clip. I go through the steps of ensuring that the audience sees every action, to ensure it is clear that the dollar bill is not switched out. This involves involving multiple audience members, and having camera man involved to get that up close view of the process. I have people shuffle and cut cards to show that they have been handled by many people and are truly random. I then reveal how the serial number of the dollar bill corresponds with the cards I’ve seemingly randomly selected from the deck. This is to make people feel that magic is real. It’s about taking a series of random acts and showing they were never random. The ending sequence, with the audience calling out the numbers and the letter from the dollar bill, leading to the specific card in the deck, brings the entire performance together.

So, in short, I'm a performer, a thinker, and a seeker of the extraordinary. I use magic not as an end in itself, but as a way to inspire a sense of wonder and to nudge people out of their comfort zones, both intellectually and emotionally. It’s about finding the magic in the seemingly mundane by paying attention to the details and pushing past the ordinary.