Category Archives: Upcoming events

Batucada beginners dance workshops coming soon!

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Time to get your groove on for summer

Batucada dancers performing at the Newtown Fair, 2016 - photo by Paul Taylor

Batucada dancers performing at the Newtown Fair, 2016 – photo by Paul Taylor

Join the Wellington Batucada this summer and dance your heart out at the CubaDupa festival!

A six week block of samba workshops designed to get you festival ready*.

Level – beginner to intermediate samba, previous dance experience a bonus but not essential.

Dates for the 2017 summer workshops are as follows:

Date Venue Address
Sunday 29 January 2017 Toi Poneke 61-69 Able Smith Street
Mon 6 February (Waitangi weekend) Thistle Hall 293 Cuba St
Sunday 12 February Thistle Hall 293 Cuba St
Sunday 19 February Thistle Hall 293 Cuba St
Sunday 26 February Thistle Hall 293 Cuba St
Saturday 4 March Te Whaea (Drama 3) 11 Hutchison Rd

Time: 2.00pm – 3.45pm
Cost: $60 for the block of six classes or $15 casual rate per class

* Participation in CupaDupa and other festivals is encouraged but you’re free attend the dance workshops without performing. Please note the dates, as most are on Sundays with the exception of Monday 6 February and Saturday 4 March.

Bring – Drink bottle, soft shoes/sneakers and exercise wear or loose clothing.

For more information please contact: wellingtonbatucada@gmail.com or call us on 027 253 7288.

CubaDupa Day 1 - dancers and band onstage - photo by Alan Shuker

CubaDupa Day 1 – dancers and band onstage – photo by Alan Shuker

Long weekend dance workshops with Josiane Santos

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22-24 October 2016 (Labour Weekend) – come and join us!

Wellington Batucada is excited to introduce this series of dance workshops to the capital.

Teacher Josiane Santos is an exuberant force, igniting her classes with the warmth and passion she holds for her culture. The talented Brazilian has danced and performed since her childhood, and from 2002 began researching Brazilian Folk Dances as choreographic material for the production of her dance shows.

Josi has taught Afro-Dance and Samba de Gafieira workshops since 2009, and has produced and directed shows seen across Brazil, USA and Sweden. She currently resides in Byron Bay, Australia where she co-founded the Brazilian Bay Company with her partner, promoting Brazilian culture and performing arts within the community. Their inclusive and empowering approach brings joy and a great sense of achievement to those participating.

More info about the weekend’s activities can be found on our Dance workshops with Josiane Santos page.

Cost is $120 for the full three days, or payable on a per workshop basis if you prefer.

This weekend has been set up in lieu of Sambanui and is open to all samba groups in New Zealand and the wider dance community.

The workshops will take place in Wellington over 22-24 October 2016 (Labour Weekend)

Feel free to rock on up to any of the workshops and register in person. You can come to one, all or some of the workshops over the long weekend – you choose!

Batucada beginners’ drumming course starts 12 June 2016

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Learn samba drumming with Wellington Batucada!

Bledisloe Cup waterfront paradeOur next Batucada beginners’ drumming course begins 12 June 2016.

It will be held on Sundays from 1pm to 3pm at our temporary rehearsal space, Community Music Junction, Level 1, 4 Hopper Street, Mt Cook, Wellington.

The course runs for 6 weeks, dates as follows: Sunday 12, 19, 26 June and Sunday 3, 10, 17 July.

Please make sure you arrive at least 15 minutes early on the first day (12 June) so that we have time to register you.

Fee is $60 for all 6 sessions if paid in advance, or $12.50 per session. Existing Batucada members are welcome to come and help or try out a new instrument, $20 Batmember special price for the full course.

SEE YOU THERE!

It’s CubaDupa time!

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Our favourite Cuba Street-based festival of the year

Day of the Dead top hat and drumsticks, ready for CubaDupaNo really – we love CubaDupa with a passion. Last year’s inaugural event was spectacular, and fabulous, and wonderful, and a little bit magical – and we’re expecting great things again this year. Woohoo!

Check out the CubaDupa website – and here’s the CubaDupa map and performance schedule (PDF) for you to download.

Once again we’ve brought together our samba school family from around the country – watch out for performances all over Cuba Street over the weekend by AKSamba (Auckland), Bay Batucada (Hawkes Bay), Sambatron/Tauranga Samba (Hamilton/Tauranga), Samba del Sol (Nelson) and O’Ziriguidum all the way from Oz – as well as Wellington Batucada. It’s gonna be massive!

…and on Sunday it’ll be even massiver (yeah, it’s a word!) with the Carnival Bloco Mass Jam – 150-odd drummers and dancers doing their samba thang through the streets and alleyways of central Wellington, finishing up on the Swan Dancehall Stage (hoping we can all fit on!) for our grand finale. Continue reading

Beginners’ drum workshops start Sunday 16 August 2015

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Learn samba drumming with Wellington Batucada!

UPDATE 01/08/15: We’ve had a huge response from people wanting to attend this latest series of beginner’s classes, and we are now FULL. We will not be accepting any more registrations or expression of interest for the upcoming sessions.

However, if you’d like to put in an early registration for the next series (which will be sometime after March next year), please feel free to do so. Instructions and registration form on our Join page.

Wellington Batucada in the RWC 2011 All Blacks victory parade

Wellington Batucada in the RWC 2011 All Blacks victory parade
Photo by NZ Sevens (click to enlarge)

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It’s time to do the CubaDupa samba!

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It’s CubaDupa weekend! Hooray!

HeadpiecesWe’ve been madly making our costumes, dressing our drums, building and painting the stage set and – of course – practicing our drumming and dancing for a couple of months now, and things are coming together nicely.

The donations we raised from our Boosted campaign have enabled us to bring a whole bunch of sambaistas to Wellington from across the country. We’re playing host to 37 drummers from AK Samba in Auckland, 40 drummers and dancers (including a brass section!) from Samba de Sol in Nelson, 30 drummers and dancers from Hamilton & Tauranga and 14 from Bay Batucada in Hawkes Bay. Together with the 55 drummers and 15 dancers from Wellington Batucada, we’re going to be bringing Carnival to Cuba Street in a big way this weekend.

We’ve trained up a whole bunch of new dancers, who will debut for you at the Wellington Batucada gig on Saturday night on the Swan Stage. Somewhere along the way we’ve also moved from Upper Cuba Street to Swan Lane, Glover Park and Te Aro Park, and our costume theme has morphed from Pushme-Pullyou into Amazonian rainforest and now “AmazoniAotearoa”.

With our costuming we have decided that you can basically never have too much bling, and so with that in mind we have cleaned Wellington out of green holographic paper and scoured the $2 shops for sparkles, diamante, glitter and other shiny things. We can neither confirm nor deny the rumour that we have also imported a rather large number of fairy lights from Hong Kong. Continue reading

Learn to dance Brazilian samba for CubaDupa!

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If you hear the sound of the drums, and can’t sit still… this is for you!

We are running a new block of Brazilian samba dance workshops, in preparation for CubaDupa and beyond…

All are welcome – even if you’ve never danced before, we can teach you. Intermediate levels and above are also very welcome – we will tailor our workshops to your level.

Our two fabulous dance directors, Arawhetu Berdinner and Hillary Reid will be taking the workshops, with the aim (if you want to!) of getting you ready to perform with us at CubaDupa. Wellington Batucada will be performing at CubaDupa on March 28 and 29, together with all the other samba schools from around the country, and we’re looking to boost our dancer numbers to create a really spectacular show. It’s gonna be awesome! Continue reading

We made it!!!!! WOOOHOOO!

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We’re doing the CubaDupa!

Thank you so very very much to all our friends, family, supporters and – perhaps most of all – to the Bat-members themselves, who dug deep, put their hands in their own pockets, and invited anyone they could think of to help us in our next grand endeavour.

Our final total was 104% of our target, at $10,430, with 59 donors – and we reached 100% with two days to spare.

Thank you to:

Alison Green, Alan Shuker, H Carmody, Miett Fear, Anonymous, Darryn Sigley, Graham Dwyer, Charlene Hillyard, Cedric Papion, Barin Das, Anonymous, Anonymous, Gordon Cessford, Simon Bowden, Geoff Simmons, Anonymous, Nick Simcock, Keith Ferguson, Jane Watson-Baker, Jenny Lea, Kate McAlpine, Anonymous, Deborah Harris, Nina Grattan, Alexandra Lutyens, Annette Paul, Michael James, Anonymous, Paula Warren, Lisa Leask, Trish Sullivan, Anonymous, Lizzie Young, Jeanette Spicer, Lise Hutcheon, Ros Nelson Breast Limited Pochin, Dana Mitchell, Zelda Gilbert, Anonymous, J Dwane, Anonymous, Anonymous, Carin Sundstedt, Megan Hand, Alex Gough, Martin Horspool, Hamish Garland, Anonymous, Anonymous, Carol Green, Tabitha Arthur, Anonymous, Anonymous, Anonymous, Andreas Leitz, Maire Harding, Tanya Nock, Anonymous, Sunita Singh, plus a whole host of other Wellington Batucada members who threw money in the hat for us at our Christmas party (I wish I’d written all your names down!).

…and a GREAT BIG THANK YOU to our fantastic Match Donor, Mr Chris Parkin from the Museum Art Hotel who has matched our $5k dollar for dollar to give us $10k in total.

YOU ALL ROCK.

Here’s our page on Boosted so you can bask in the glory of those numbers – and here’s a picture for you of a whole host of very happy Samba people – from all over New Zealand – who will be playing together for your entertainment and listening/dancing pleasure at CubaDupa next March:

Sambanui 2014 group photo

Now go check out the CubaDupa website and see what wonders await you!

A thousand reasons to support our CubaDupa Boosted campaign!

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words…

…so here’s ours – a thousand reasons to make a donation towards the CubaDupa Carnival Zone via our Boosted campaign. So far we have raised $4,710 towards the total of $10,000 – and we have only 6 more days in which to raise the remaining 53%. Would you like to become part of the team and join us in our journey?

MAKE A DONATION TODAY!

Wellington Batucada at Cuba Street Carnival

THANK YOU xxxxxx
Continue reading

We’re performing at WOMAD next year!

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Wellington Batucada wins the 2015 WOMAD Performer Competition

Busking for WOMAD votes on Courtenay Place

Busking for WOMAD votes on Courtenay Place
Photo by Alan Shuker

Check out the WOMAD website!!!

Dear Batucada friends and family, Bat-members past, present, and future…

It’s been one heck of a ride.

Over the past 8 weeks we have worked together on an awesome common goal – to win the opportunity to perform at WOMAD next year – a festival that we love and admire.

We’ve asked pretty much everyone we know to vote for us, and then we’ve asked a whole bunch of people we don’t know to vote for us too – through our regular gigs and special vote-collecting busking sessions all over Wellington and beyond.

It’s been a heck of a busy and full-on 2 months for all of us, and I think what has impressed me the most is the huge amount of original effort, creativity and sheer guts and determination that so many people have shown. Continue reading