Floating away with Servais Le Roy

Across from my desk there's this corkboard where I have all sorts of stuff tacked up: old race numbers, a photocopy of a page from a Get Fuzzy book, a postcard of a squirrel smoking - a pretty eclectic bunch of items. Anyway, this board also houses my calendar, which this year is "magicians of the past"-themed (last year was "Sci-Fi monsters of 1950s cinema"). For the most part, these magicians are household name guys like Harry Houdini, but this month brought up Servais Le Roy. Here's the picture from my calendar:

Having very little knowledge of Mr. Le Roy, I was intrigued by the image. Why was there a chicken in the top corner? And what was this fantastic levitation mystery?

I consulted my copy of The Illustrated History of Magic (yes, I am a total dork. To be fair, though, I've got a TON of books on lots of other subjects. Some of which are very cool). Apparently Le Roy was a rare performer who not only pleased audiences, but also invented tricks for other magicians. But what he is best known for is his trick known as the "Asrah," which he first performed around 1902:

Le Roy hypnotized his wife, covered her with a white silk cloth, caused her to float up in the air and then to hang in space as he passed a hoop over her vertical body. While he gestured dramatically, she floated higher. Suddenly he whipped away the cloth; she was gone!

Here's a YouTube video I found of the trick (with the added bonus of the magician pretending to be Le Roy):

You've got to love the weird man servants and the strange dancing. Something tells me this wasn't exactly the way Le Roy did the trick, but it's probably fairly close.

Of course, this got me thinking: what other Asrah videos are there out there? There's this dramatic television version (in Portuguese, perhaps?), starring some kind of heartthrob magician (based on the squeals from the audience) and using Aerosmith as a soundtrack:

Then there's this guy, who seems to think the music from Back to the Future is just the perfect accompaniment to the illusion:

Then there's ... this:

Not a very good rendition, but you do get to see the non sequitur of a big man with a tiny stroller at the beginning.

I guess this shows that Le Roy created something special, since the trick is still performed today. Of course, I still have no idea why the chicken is on the poster, but that's a mystery for another day.