Knife thrower David Adamovich walks us through some of his most popular stunts.

Topic: The Great Throwdini’s Most Popular Stunts.

David Adamovich: One of the more interesting stunts in the act is when I do some speed throwing, to demonstrate one of my world records.  So, the girl stands at the board and I’ll hold 16 knives and I’ll tell the audience, “I’m going to throw these 16 knives in about eight seconds.  That’s a half-second each.  Not only am I going to throw them that fast, but I’m going to throw them opposite sides to the board.”  Then I say, “Just one more thing, there’s going to be a girl in the middle that I have to throw on each side of.”  So, I’m standing there with this handful of knives, and they’re all right there.  I got one in my hand and we give each other the signal that she’s ready and I’m ready, and I start to throw and it’s fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast right to each side of her body as I’m doing the stunt and emptying my hand of the knives.  

And there you can see I’m throwing to each side.  Of course she’s pretending she’s afraid, but she’s not.  She’s very brave.  And there are 16 knives in probably eight seconds.

And one of the other stunts I do is throwing a bunch up one side; we call it “Lateral with the straw.”  She backs up to the eight or 10 that I put on the side of her then I would put a straw in her mouth and I throw right up the front, four or five knives, getting very close to her bod. And on the one that I decide that I’ll break the straw with is thrown about three inches from her nose and goes right through the straw and the piece that was cut falls right to the ground.

And then we have another stunt where I pile five knives in each of my pocket and I refer to it as, “Knife throwing the old western style, instead of gun slinging.”  And I pull knives out of my pockets, the right hand and then the left hand and I throw them to alternate sides of the girl, right across the front of her body.

And then we have a stunt called, “The Profile,” where I throw three knives to the board and she leans back and rests her head on those three knives and I take a handful of nine or 10 knives and I outline her body, starting from her ankles or knees right up across the abdomen and the chest and finally right over the throat.  There have been times went he knives were really close and they were laying against her body, and she had to like wiggle her way out to stand up and take the applause

I do two blind stunts during the act; this one is called the double blind.  I wear a metal mask and a hood and she sets me in place and hands me the knives, and then she takes one long knife and stands in the middle of the board and bangs the knife on each side of her body in a random fashion and I just listen for that sound and that’s where I throw the knife.  If I don’t get the right sound, or I’m not sure where she tapped, I just ask her to repeat it, and we do it again and then finally when those six knives are out of my hand, I’m left with one knife, which is a flaming, firing knife and that one is thrown right where she was standing.  She just turns, hits the center of the board and jumps out of the way and that knife has gasoline on it and a lighter, the knife has a big flame on it, and there’s a bullet loaded into the blade.  It’s a crimped bullet, and she jumps out of the way, I throw it, it’s on fire, hits the board and the bullet bangs and the audience literally jumps right out of their seat and then I turn, I pull off the hood and I pull of the mask and get a thunderous round of applause.

And the other blind stunt I do is throwing six, 16-inch knives, three on each side of the girl, but the target girl is behind a six-foot high by four-foot wide veil of paper.  And to make this stunt even harder, I say, it really is maximum risk because we’ll do it in the dark.  And the lights go out in the theater and a strobe light goes on and I’m just looking at this really quick flash of strobe against where I believe the paper is, and I through three to one side, three to the other and then I walk to the paper, I pull the paper, we drop it down and the lights go on.  And there she is, right behind that piece of paper and the knives are right up the side of her body.

Recorded on July 15, 2010
Interviewed by Max Miller