If you’ve seen a clip of his performances on TV’s America’s Got Talent, you know Dustin Tavella is a different breed of magician, one who incorporates his personal story into his illusions and presentation onstage. In Las Vegas, you can catch Tavella doing his thing at the Luxor Theater in the thrilling live version of the hit competition show, America’s Got Talent Las Vegas Live, where he shares the stage with other talented entertainers from different disciplines. It’s an opportunity he truly relishes and another exciting chapter in his own story.

How did your life change after you won America’s Got Talent season 16?

The craziest thing is my life was already in a place where so much was changing, and it just kept getting crazy after my audition. We got a phone call asking if we wanted our adopted son’s older brother, and that was in the midst of doing AGT. Looking back to just six months ago versus now, I’m living a different life. And I went from being super broke and wondering what’s next in a pandemic to adopting two boys, moving and having a full-time job doing two shows every night, five nights a week.

How has your family adjusted to life in Las Vegas?

People outside of Vegas don’t realize what living in Vegas is like. For it was kind of scary because we were moving across the country, and we were unsure about Vegas. But we could not be happier. Our neighborhood is amazing, the boys love it, there’s always other kids out playing basketball and riding scooters, and we’ve become close with our neighbors. We’ve been pleasantly surprised, and we love life in Vegas.

Your emotional, uplifting performance style is quite different from the typical magician. How did you develop that aspect of your act?

I think both my wife and I have been through a lot of crazy stuff in our lives; we both had a run in the entertainment industry, and I got to a place where I decided if I was going to work hard for anything, I wanted to be able to bring hope to people and share some of those things we’ve gone through and struggled to overcome. Our culture is fueled with so much stuff that’s just kind of empty, and I want to be proud of what I’m doing, whether this is my last year, or I spend the rest of my life doing this on this platform.

And you get to wrap things up every night in America’s Got Talent Las Vegas Live at Luxor. What do you enjoy about your role in the show?

Everyone who’s a part of this show has some kind of crazy story how their life was changed, and you get to watch these danger acts, dancing, singing, aerialists, all this stuff, so it’s fun for me to end the show with this message that people can go out and live out the things they feel they are called to. People can come and watch and be entertained and leave feeling empowered.

You are the third magician to win AGT and the previous two, Mat Franco and Shin Lim, both star in their own shows on the Las Vegas Strip. Is that something you’d like to do in the future?

That would be absolutely incredible, and I have been working on some things that I’m hoping could make it possible to do something like that. But life has been such a whirlwind and we’re taking it one day at a time. I would want it to be something different from what we are seeing, especially within the magic genre. There are a lot of magicians in Vegas, and I want to try to find that thing that makes it special.

Luxor, 702.262.4400

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