Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (May 24/02) - Life on the road isn't easy for most performers, but it helps if you tour with your spouse.

Corey and Karin Arcane are based in Saskatoon, Sask., and have travelled most of the country, but Inuvik is the furthest north they've been.

The pair have been performing as a team for five years, but Corey says he's always had a hankering for show business.

"I've been doing it ever since I was eight years old, when I got my first magic kit," Corey said. "I just never really grew out of it."

He was in drama during high school and then in improvisational comedy groups and later as a stand-up comedian.

"I started using magic in my stand-up routine and pretty soon it became more magic than comedy," he said.

Corey learned a lot of his act from reading books, watching videos and from other magicians.

One of only a handful of female escape artists in North America, Karin says the show is based on many of the standards used in magic, but with a special flair.

"There are a lot of basics in magic, where there's one way to do something, but there are many ways to present it," Karin said. "A lot of it comes down to Corey's creativity."

"It's a combination of a few different types of magic -- illusionism, mentalism and escape," Corey said.

While their show is easy to travel to places like Inuvik, the pair plan to get into some larger scale illusions.

"Levitations, barrel escapes, underwater escapes, things like that are what we're looking at doing, but in order to do that makes it very complicated to get to our venues," Karin said.

They normally travel two weeks at a time and return home for 10 days, but this summer, they plan an East Coast tour that will start in Manitoba in July and travel east until the end of August.

The Arcanes have three kids who enjoy magic and show business, but wish their folks weren't on the road so much.

"They think it's cool that mom and dad are magicians, but not all the time," Corey said.