No need to say anything else, the image says it all: our next summer camp is only one month away and you better hurry up if you don’t want to miss one of the best weekends of the year!!
If you’ve been there before, we know you don’t need additional reasons… but if you haven’t, here a great video to convince you!
Without even realizing it we have started 2019 and after a long Christmas break we have come back to the weekly rehearsals with more energy than ever! New members in the colla, new goals to achieve and lots of activities already scheduled throughout the whole year.
And here is a bit more on how first one went!
For the third consecutive year, the Sydney Human Towers have been invited to perform in the annual Festa Major of Sydney organized by the Casal Català of NSW. And this year, as a novelty to the previous years, the event has been relocated to Bay View Park where the celebration started with a sweet breakfast at 10 AM while all the Kangaroos were getting ready!
Around 12 PM the park turned as yellow as it has ever been, besides the shirts the members were wearing, a lot of guests and visitors wanted to be part of it and got the new T-Shirt recently incorporated to the merchandising of the year. The colla were very enthusiastic about the performance, as after the holidays we had been training really hard to try to reach the top of the International Human Towers ranking. And during the previous rehearsals we had been attempting for the first time the 2of6 and the 3of6p till dosos.
Despite last minute changes that didn’t allow the presence of some of the most experienced castellers of the colla, we were still be very positive and we decided to start with a 4d6 with the pillar, a castell already achieved for the first time on the previous Festa Major and done many times in the rehearsals till dosos or with one less level. Our Cap de Pinyes called the pinya with all the main positions filled by members of our group. As it was looking perfect, stronger and more compact than ever, segons started to climb on top of baixos, as well as terços did. The shape was very nicely squared until dosos climbed on top of terços and the tronc started to get too close and lost the shape. For this reason, even though dosos were already on position and the aixecadora and enxaneta were on the third level, we decided to dismount it and try again.
On the second attempt of the 4d6p, the castell looked significantly better when dosos climbed on the top of the third level and the Cap the Colla encouraged our kids to reach the top. But by the time the two little girls were about to climb on dosos, the castell was taking longer than expected and the kids felt the tiredness of the tower and decided to disassemble it. Even we couldn’t complete the whole structure while Elsa, Ainhoa, terços and dosos started to climb down we left a solid pillar of three.
On the third round, with our confidence 100% back, we decided to try it harder and build a tower that we were confident on, the 3d6p. Even having a tougher structure than the previous one and being more complicated to defend, it’s a tower that we had been practicing and we were about to build the tronc with castellers that already defended it on the previous performance in the Botanical Gardens. Pau reorganized the huge amount of people aiming to build the pinya that again, was concise and geometrically framed. Segons and terços kept the perfect round shape and the tower was looking very good when dosos started to climb up. Unfortunately, dosos were exhausted from the two previous attempts in the 4d6p and they couldn’t reach the top of the terços.
At this stage, as we weren’t very lucky in the previous rounds and we couldn’t achieve towers of 6 levels, we decided to keep the performance on with towers of 5 levels. Taking advantage of the large amount of people that came to see us performing; in order to turn the festival into more fun; and give the newbies the opportunity of building their first tower in a performance, we became creative and decided to invent a bigger structure allowing more castellers to be part of it. Without pinya and plenty of the newbies climbing on it, we reshaped a 3d5p with two towers of 5 until dosos attached in the opposite sides. Even with the weirdness of the structure we cannot be more proud of it as the new members of the colla made a great effort to kept that shape. So… we can say very loud: long life to those newbies, you rock!!
We finished the performance with four pilars of 3 filled with some newbies that again did an excellent job, as well as the pinya and all those castellers who are always there and today, more than ever, made this performance possible!!!
Paella, games and dances organized by the Casal Català followed the performance after we baptised the newbies and we danced our the traditional “Triki-Traka”!
Congratulations to the colla to keep making history and perform for the third consecutive year in the Festa Major, as well as everybody who came and helped us and the Casal Català for making it possible!!!!
Finally, they are here: our new T-shirts are out!!! Many castellers participated in our T-shirt contest and more than 15 designs were submitted. As you can see in the pictures, the most voted design is a drawing of our first 4 of 6, with the Sydney Opera house inside the pinya. Congratulations to the winner! Well done, Cesc!
We know it looks amazing, so if you want one, hurry up and contact any member of the committee, because they are selling FAST!
Today, a group of castellers cooked at the Gure Txoko a delicious lunch for 20 people. This is our small contribution to the cooking roster (the Txokocooks) that our Basque friends organise for their club every Sunday of the year. And there’s no need to say that it was very yummy and we were very happy to cook. After all, it’s thanks to this nice relationship that we could organise great events such as the Human Towers Fest, the AGM or most of our celebrations as a colla!
The menu consisted of gazpacho (cold tomato and veggie soup typical from Spain), fish with orange sauce and arròs amb llet (rice pudding). There will be more lunches to enjoy at the Gure Txoko, so make sure that you check your calendar and book the day either to eat… or to cook (yep, show off and share your amazing cooking skills)!
