Mitaka Sports Festival 2005 (Review)

Monday 10th October 2005

It was a slightly chilly and drizzly day but some people in Tokyo managed to get out of their beds on this national holiday and drag their bodies over to the Mitaka City Hall for the Mitaka Sports Festival 2005.

For a full review and video

Despite the average turn-out, we were still able to get our axé levels up and put on a good show. Actually, our ステージ　デビュー as Bantus Capoeira Japão.

Espaguete was first to arrive and enjoyed some quality time with his wife. Meanwhile Cafune, Caçapa and Joseph made it to the festival with the berimbaus, atabaque, pandeiro, agogo, and reco-reco getting some strange looks from the other passengers on the bus. Kanako and Kotaro (our Kid Super Star, just recovered from his 38degree fever), were next to arrive. Soon came Quati, Takeshinho, Noriko, and finally Mico Estrela, making up the group for our performance.

The event was running a little early and caught us off guard. Although we were able to set up the berimbaus and atabaque, and video camera in time, and made it onto the stage for our introduction.

Our full bateria sounded great. Kotaro and Joesef, being the youngest in our group had the honour of opening the roda. After a quick game of capoeira, we opened the stage to our volunteer capoeiristas. There were a few keen kids and young adults from the audience willing to put their bodies on the line to learn some new moves.

The “free workshop” consisted of the ginga, negativa, and quixada, a triplet of capoeira movements essential in the next part of our show. The OPEN RODA! Caçapa and a stunned young girl were the first to show off the newly learned movements. Although our first volunteer was shocked by the power of capoeria , our other volunteers more than made up for it (See video below). Having had only 5 minutes to learn the basics, we were pretty impressed.

It was a great first public show for us, with some students having less than 3 months experience in capoeira and already getting their first taste of fame and fortune.

An impromptu roda in the lobby gave us an opportunity to hand out some flyers and meet some potential students (I hope that Cossack dancing kid comes to a class soon).

After enjoying our free bentos and tom-foolery in the Bantus Capoeira green room, we joined the audience and gave our axé to the ICU Lambs Samba School and mixed it up with the sexy members of Clube do Paixaô to end off the Sports Festival with some sweaty samba in the seats!

Of course, we’ll be training hard to improve for our next performance, but we can’t wait till next year. Let’s hope it’s a sunny day!

Please the play button to start the video. Click here if you don't see the button.

A BIG thanks to Cafune, Kanako, Kotaro, Quati, Mico, Noriko, Takeshinho, Joseph, and Espaguete for the great performance. Thanks also to Akiko for taking the video, and to the Mitaka Shiyakusho for inviting us to perform at your event.