Diversity Festival 2025

Incredible audience participation

We did the Diversity Festival for the first time a year or so ago, and loved it. Loved the multicultural nature of it, the wonderful variety of performers, and the fabulously supportive and appreciative audience.

Various members of Batucada were also performing in other groups throughout the evening, and it was fantastic to have the opportunity to see our Batucada whānau demonstrating their skills in different cultural contexts.

The unique feature of this show is that the majority of the audience are also performing, which means you get this wonderful flow of people doing their bit on-stage and then coming back to watch everyone else. It also means that the majority of the audience is skilled in the performance arts, and presumably also loves being up on stage, a feature which will become apparent later on…

One of the youngest audience members was also one of the most enthusiastic. In the half-light at the front of the auditorium I could see a tiny little girl, maybe two or three years old at the most, jumping up and down and dancing her heart out with every act that came up on stage – she really was having the Best Time Ever.

We were the last group to perform, which is quite an honour, and one which we did our best to live up to.

Wellington Batucada performs Sambanui samba reggae at the Diversity Festival 2025
Video by Ana Paula Medeiros

We began with Sambanui samba reggae, our tricky off-beat piece with super-structured dancer choreography, which looks super-impressive on-stage.

This was followed by our version of Rocinha samba, complete with guest appearances by Anri and Solene dressed in their feathery finery as Samba no pe. The audience went wild when they came back on-stage with us – they are very popular. During this piece our passistas (lead dancers) take it in turns to dance a solo at the front of the stage, supported and cheered on by the other dancers.

Anri was waiting at the side of the stage for her turn to solo, standing near the top of the steps that lead from the auditorium up onto the stage. All of a sudden she felt her hand being taken by the tiny little girl from the audience, who had climbed up the steps to join us. OMG. Too cute for words!

Our newest member of the dance team just couldn’t get enough of the samba – or of Anri herself. They held hands together and the little girl just jumped, and jumped, and jumped. She wasn’t freaked out by the volume of the drums, or the movement of the other dancers nearby – all she wanted to do was dance and dance and never stop. It was completely wonderful.

At this point dance director Arawhetu invited the rest of the audience to come up and join us too – which they did. As more and more people surged up the steps and onto the stage our director Tim signalled the drummers to move backwards and squash up a bit so that we could give everyone a bit more room at the front. Our dancers led the choreography and – very impressively – the entire contingent of new dancers followed every dance move to perfection. You could totally tell they were all skilled performers in their own right.

At the end of Rocinha samba we prepared to leave the stage, but our new dancers weren’t ready to stop quite yet, and demanded an encore. OK! No problem!

We launched into Olodum samba reggae and, once again, with our experienced dancers leading the way, our new set of dancers rose magnificently to the challenge. By this point the stage was absolutely filled to capacity, and it was a completely awesome and surreal experience being in the band, playing for this mass of people we’d never met before, all of whom were picking up the dance moves like they’d been doing them forever. By the time we finished Olodum I reckon virtually the whole audience were up on-stage with us, which is not something you see every day!

View from the stage as Wellington Batucada and most of the audience perform Six-eight at the Diversity Festival 2025
Video by Kelly Etuata

What a fantastic show, and what a wonderful, marvellous, enthusiastic audience. As an aside, it would not surprise me to see our littlest, newest dancer make a career in dance one day, because she’s certainly got what it takes to do so, nurtured within a whānau and community that clearly value and celebrate the performance arts. Thank you to the Diversity Festival for inviting us to take part again this year. We absolutely loved it.

Postscript: Our team photo was taken by the compère as he was awarding the certificates of participation for 2025. Somehow, our tiny dancer appeared on stage with us, which was entirely appropriate, seeing as she was one of the stars of the show. Once the certificate was received and photos taken, she marched off again, clearly satisfied with a job well done.