While other teenagers are doing teenager stuff, a local girl is literally doing magic – “pulling rabbits out of a hat” and “sawing her partner into pieces”.
Anja Steyn, a Grade 9 learner at Durbanville High School, has just won trophies in two categories at the International Youth Magic Championships in Atlanta, USA – in the close-up category with her Cups-and-ice cubes act and in the stage category with her Think-a-drink act.
Anja, who will be 15 years old on 21 August, also attended the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM) convention, which was held at the same time.
She was nine years old when she became intrigued in magic after she saw a show of Lance Burton in which he performed his dove act.
Her parents drove her to the College of Magic in Claremont for classes on Saturdays. She has won several competitions and won several prizes at the college.
Dedication
At ten, Anja became the youngest member of the Bernard Deyer Junior Order in 2019. The order was created by the South African Magical Society (Sams) when they saw Anja’s dedication during a “Magic cruise” in Durban as part of a convention to celebrate the society’s 100th anniversary.
Thanks to Covid-19, she had the opportunity to vitually join the Lance Burton Teen Seminar in 2020. Through this programme, she was introduced to Jeff McBride’s Magic and Mystery School in Las Vegas, and became a virtual student of the school later that year.
This year in July Anja went to Atlanta in the USA in person to attend the seminar.
“The teen seminar is more than just magic, it’s about making life-long friendships, and learning skills you’ll use for the rest of your life. It’s amazing being able to meet, and be taught by some of the greatest magicians or magic teachers of our time,” she says.
Anja has received several awards in her five years of magic. Some of those include Student of the Year at the College of Magic and the Dennis Greef Creativity and Originality Award.
She also came second last year in IBM’s virtual youth contest, and also received the Adele Friel Rhindress Young Magician Award for advancing the art and history of magic.
Praised
Anja and her partner in some acts, Sisonke Mkwela, were praised in a review in June this year for their acts at The College of Magic’s The Magic Key show at Artscape.
“We see Anja Steyn ‘compressing’ Sisonke Mkwela, concertina-like style. It is a dazzling squash and a squeeze. This duo also cream it in Think a Drink – in which we see Steyn producing an endless supply of beverages from a cardboard container. Mkwela is her assistant, Ronald. His brilliant clowning is part of the success of this routine and feeds into our incredulity as audience as we gasp at the endless stream of drinks,” was the comment in a review by Robyn Cohen.
About her recent achievements, Anja says on IBM’s Facebook page she was really nervous about doing the competition.
Two trophies
“I haven’t done a live competition in almost a year. But everyone was really supportive and I’m so glad I pushed through. It made me realise once again why I do magic … it’s to make people smile,” she says.
“It’s a feeling I cannot put to words – being able to walk away with two trophies. This is not something I’ve ever dreamt of, not even in my wildest dreams. It really is a huge honour,” Anja says. Although magic is her first love, she is interested in human behaviour or psychology as a career one day.
