I just saw this act on a rerun of Letterman a couple of nights ago. I couldn’t find any links to anything other than this same Letterman show.
Does anyone know how they’re able to do what they do? They walk around on an inverted “floor” almost as freely as if it were rightside-up. I can’t see any control wires or harnesses, and they’re able to “lift” their feet independently, off the surface.
It’s very fascinating, but I’m baffled.
Yeah, this act is amazing! That’s what I want out of my circus acts: “How the hell did they do that?”
Well, how did they do it? Magnets? Gotta be magnets.
Thanks to TiVo, I figured it out:
[Spoiler] They were suspended by a wire. The wire went from a stationary point on the ceiling, through the floor board, up their pant leg, to a harness under their clothing. Notice the center space between the floorboard slats. One foot is always traveling along this space (they turn and strike several positions to hide that fact). The free foot can do and go wherever it wants, but they shuffle it along the floorboard in the same way that the wired foot moves so that you don’t catch on to the stiltedness of the wired leg. Notice that the man goes out first and the woman follows. They never change places since they can’t the way the trick is set up.
In slo-mo, I can see the wire.[/spoiler]
Peace.
I don’t see how that could be correct, Moriah.
They were both able to “lift” both feet off the “floor.” Not both at the same time, of course, but it seems if they were anchored by one of their feet, then that foot would be stuck to the surface, and could only shuffle around on it.
Ne’ c’est pas?
They lifted the rigged foot only a few inches off the ‘floor.’ With the wire behind the leg, they are able to bend their leg slightly, loosing contact with the floor giving the appearance of normal walking. They both could have lifted both feet off the floor at the same time, but that would ruin the illusion and showed that they were hanging rather than gravitated to the ‘floor.’
My apologies, I went from memory. Since TiVo recorded the repeated episode in question, I reviewed it and discovered the wire was not down the pant leg, but between the legs. The performers stood and walked in a way to hide the wire as much as possible.