In April 2026, during Watches and Wonders week, a luxury house hosted around seventy international partners at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. Harry Covert performed close-up table by table, between courses. Several guests left their seats to follow the performance elsewhere in the room.
The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, an evening in April 2026. Seventy covers, a seated dinner, a luxury house hosting partners who have come from Europe and Asia. The starters have just been cleared. The noise is that of a dinner that has found its rhythm, a mix of French, English and several Asian languages.
Harry Covert is at the far table. Six people have turned towards him. A seventh, seated elsewhere, has got up and is standing behind them, saying nothing.
Two tables away, someone does the same thing a quarter of an hour later. Then another. The movement repeats throughout the dinner: guests leaving their seats to get a closer look at what has just happened at another table, and above all to check whether they will understand it better the second time.
Watches and Wonders week brings most of the world's watchmaking industry to Geneva, and with it a series of receptions held on the fringes of the fair. This particular evening took place at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, forty-five minutes away by road.
A major house was hosting around seventy international partners there. The name of the brand, the location of its stand and the identity of the guests remain confidential: at this kind of event, discretion is a condition of entry, not an option.
The objective came down to two things. Make the evening count, first. And then make sure that partners from different countries and cultures actually talked to each other.
That is the weakness of a seated dinner. The format is elegant, it structures the evening, it allows for speeches. But it locks everyone in with their six or seven neighbours for two hours. An Asian partner and a European partner seated at opposite ends of the room will leave without having exchanged a word.
The entertainment therefore had to create movement without disrupting service, without encroaching on the speeches, and without running over the timings set by the agency.
Harry Covert worked table by table, between courses. He settles in, performs for a few minutes for six or seven people, steps away when service resumes, moves on to the next table.
At that distance there is no stage. The hands are twelve inches from the faces, and it is the guests who hold, who choose, who decide. The effect is built out of what they do.
Around a table of seven, the phrase proves itself effortlessly. One guest is at the centre of the experience, the other six are watching his face rather than the magician's hands, and the whole table is commenting out loud before it has even finished. Nobody is a spectator in the usual sense.
The clearest sign came from what happened between the tables. Guests got up to follow the performance elsewhere. They wanted to know whether the same pieces would come round again, and to catch on the second pass the detail they had missed on the first. Part of the room started moving of its own accord, with nobody inviting them to.
Several tables asked for a second pass. The running order made it impossible: the speeches, the service and the rest of the programme filled the remaining time. That constraint was respected to the minute.
This is a part of the job that is rarely discussed. At a brand event, keeping to the timings counts as much as the quality of the performance. Entertainment that overruns by ten minutes pushes back a speech, and a speech that runs late is noticed.
The evening was performed in French and in English, depending on the table.
A partner evening exists to say thank you and to maintain business relationships. Anything that draws attention away from that is wasted time; anything that brings people closer works for the organiser.
Close-up does exactly that. It gives people who don't know each other something to experience at the same moment, and then something to talk about. Faced with an effect nobody can explain, a sales director and a distributor come up with the same theory at the same time. The conversation starts by itself, and it starts on neutral ground.
For an international audience, the visual dimension solves a good part of the language problem. An effect needs no translation. Mentalism then draws on ideas that exist in every culture: choice, attention, intuition. With a room largely made up of guests from Asia, that immediate readability changes everything.
The format also adapts to the pace of service. A few minutes per table between two courses, a clean exit as soon as the plates arrive, no technical setup. The organiser keeps control of the running order from start to finish.
For the brand, the effect is indirect but real: attention given to its partners, at their table, individually, which sets the evening apart from a conventional business dinner.
The guests saw the Olympic Museum, they had dinner, they listened to speeches. What they talked about on the way out was something else.
The best indicator of the evening was not a compliment but a movement. Adults in evening dress, at a formal dinner, got up from their tables to look at something more closely. That is not a behaviour you can instruct.
The requests for a second pass say the same thing. They could not be granted, and that refusal left the questions open: the guests left with their theories and no answer, which extends an evening far more effectively than an explanation.
For the client, the aim was to create an evening their partners would remember and to get conversations flowing between guests who did not know each other. The movement observed between the tables answered both.
Lausanne hosts a significant share of the gala dinners, partner evenings and international receptions in the canton of Vaud. Its proximity to Geneva also makes it a natural alternative for events held around the major economic and watchmaking gatherings, when Geneva venues are fully booked.
Close-up and mentalism can be arranged during a drinks reception, a seated dinner, a client evening or a private reception. The format adjusts to the venue, the number of guests, the languages spoken and the timings set by the organiser.
Demand comes mainly from watchmaking houses and luxury brands, marketing and communications departments, event agencies and DMCs, PR agencies, and from hotels and reception venues hosting international clients.
During Watches and Wonders week, availability goes early. An evening in Geneva, Lausanne or elsewhere in French-speaking Switzerland during that period is booked several months in advance.
Planning a partner evening, a brand dinner or an international reception in Lausanne or Geneva? Tell us about the venue, the number of guests and how the evening is structured.
Close-up is performed table by table, between courses, with no stage and no setup. It gives guests a shared experience and then a common subject of conversation, which makes the first exchanges easier between partners who don't know each other. At the Olympic Museum, that format alone was enough to get part of the room moving between tables.
Performances take place during the drinks reception or between courses, depending on service and speeches. The timing is agreed in advance with the organiser or the agency, table by table. At this evening in Lausanne, the programme left no room for a second pass, and that limit was respected.
Yes. Visual magic needs no translation, and mentalism draws on ideas that exist in every culture: choice, attention, intuition. Performances are delivered in French as well as English. At this event, a significant share of the guests came from Asia, and the visual format made it possible to perform without depending on language.
Yes, provided you plan ahead. The week of the fair brings a large number of receptions to Geneva, Lausanne and the rest of French-speaking Switzerland, and availability is booked several months in advance. Close-up fits a partner dinner, a private presentation, a brand evening or an agency event, in Lausanne as in Geneva.
The brand's name, the identity of the guests and the details of the reception are only published with written consent. No photograph or video is taken on the performer's own initiative. This case study is the illustration: the evening is told, the client remains anonymous, and no images of the event are published.
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