All aboard the Friday walking bus!

After the success of our “Pied Piper” parades along the waterfront during the Rugby World Cup, the City Council decided to see if it would also work for the Sevens. They called it the “walking bus” in their publicity, and hoped we would get a massive crowd to follow us from the Fanzone to the stadium, in the same way that they did during the World Cup.

The big difference between a World Cup rugby game and the Sevens is that the rugby game has a specified kick-off time and if you’re late, you’ll miss it. So there’s clearly going to be a large number of people all heading to the stadium at around the same time.

Sevens weekend is different. Costumed ticket-holders gather in huge numbers in the bars and restaurants that line the waterfront, but they all make their way to the stadium at different times – they drift along whenever they feel like it and they aren’t constrained by a single magic kick-off moment. Continue reading

Merry (early) Christmas!

I swear, the Wellington Santa Parade gets earlier every year! This year we weren’t even halfway through November before it was time to don the pohutukawa headgear and get out on the streets in support of the bearded guy in red.

Only a couple of weeks before, we’d been marching through Wellington as part of the All Blacks World Cup victory celebrations, and here we were again – a similar route but in the opposite direction. It was a lovely sunny day and everyone seemed to having a pretty good time, although it was definitely a bit quieter than the total mayhem we’d experienced a couple of weeks earlier.

I think the trickiest thing about parades is timing. Not timing as in keeping in time with each other (although that’s always fun when you’re concentrating on moving forward in a choreographed fashion as well as playing) – I mean keeping in time with the other floats and performers in the parade.

Let me explain. Continue reading

Back on the field again

There’s a superstition amongst the Wellington Phoenix Yellow Fever that when Batucada performs at a game, the team loses. Oh dear. I believe there’s even a chant, which is probably not repeatable in a family-friendly environment…

We haven’t played at a Phoenix game for ages, but out of the blue we got a call, asking us to play. Superstition notwithstanding, we were more than happy to answer the call. Continue reading

Second Quarter Final parade in Wellington

This photo says it all, really… Continue reading

The All Blacks are coming to town!

The New Zealand vs Canada Fanzone-to-stadium parade – notable for the enormous fake beards (at least, I assume they were fake!) worn by some of the Canadian fans, and the fact that this was Wellington’s one and only All Blacks game during the World Cup.

Oh – and also that our semi-official photographer, Geoff Infield, deserted us halfway through the parade to take pictures of the Air Force Red Checkers aerobatics display.

Ah well – we had fun even without ya, Geoff! Continue reading

Festival of Carnivale – dancing and drumming in the rain

It was cold and wet for our Cuba Mall gig, which was a pity, as Cuba Street is something of a spiritual home for Wellington Batucada and we love playing there.

So cold and wet, in fact, that our normally staunch dancers ditched their flimsy costumes and performed in their normal streetwear instead.

So cold and wet, in fact, that this may well go down in the Batucada archives as one of our briefest appearances ever – not much longer than 10 minutes by all accounts. Continue reading