Monday, September 18, 2006

Capoeira at the Octopus Street Party in Notting Hill


This weekend my Capoeira school, Capoeira Canal, did a demo performance at a street party in Notting Hill, organised by the Octopus Challenge - a charity raising money for cancer research and support. We did a couple of shows, once early on, and once a little later - the later one was definately the better one because the crowd was a lot bigger (maybe up to a couple of hundred), they had drunk a bit more champagne by then, and us capoeiristas had a little bit of Dutch courage after a brief visit to the pub also! We were a little bit nervous before the first performance, because only a handful of beginners (including me) had turned up, and I was worried that our basic moves wouldn't do any justice to neither the school nor the game of capoeira - fortunately, just before we took the stage a couple of more experienced players arrived, so inbetween politely applauding the beginners, there were plenty of oohs and aaahs from the crowd when the flips, handstands and big kicks came out.

Djanira managed to make the second performance, and has video footage of me - looking like a rank-amateur, of course, but fortunately I didn't fall over and make a complete prat of myself. Unfortunately it's too big to put on here, and she didn't get any photos of me, so you'll have to wait for another day to laugh at my inabilities. However, here's a couple of photos of some more impressive play going on.






2 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like good fun - you should show them a thing or two about jumper fighting though. Never was there a more deadly martial art.

Alun said...

Mate, you know that jumper fighting is far too dangerous to be used in public, and in this situation the proper crowd restrictions weren't in place, so I daren't unleash my skills. Maybe I'll introduce some of more the advanced capoeiristas to the basics of jumper fighting soon though (in a properly controlled environment, of course).