Song & Dance

Today is song and dance day. To start with, Nicola headed down to the Wellington West Plaza hotel for a breakfast, before crossing the road for rehearsals for this afternoon’s Sweet Adelines International Region 35 (that’s New Zealand to the rest of us) Annual Convention and Competition, which is taking place this weekend. The chorus competition is this afternoon – the quartets were held yesterday. The main focus of the competition, for the Wellington City Chorus, isn’t the position achieved (although winning would be nice, of course) but what marks they achieve, as this will affect whether they get an invite to the World Championships in Denver next year.

Meanwhile, I had a leisurely breakfast before wandering down to the dance studio in Vivian Street, to take my silver medal test. I met up with some of our gang from the intermediates class, and we all made our way through our routines with varying levels of self-perceived ability or otherwise. We’ll get the results tonight when we go to the social dance.

In the afternoon, I went along to see Nicola perform in the actual competition, and saw a couple of the other choirs that they were up against. In the end, the Wellington City Chorus came second with a score of 620, a result with which they were not best pleased. There will be a post-mortem on the result when she goes to practice tomorrow, so expect an update then.

We weren’t allowed to take any photos during the performance, so here’s one of Nicola in full war-paint:

In the evening we took a taxi down to the dance studio on Vivian Street for the Social Dance. There we met up with others from various other classes, some of whom we’d met before. The social dance was slightly less well-attended than previous ones we’ve been to, which helped in reducing the opportunities for bumping into fellow dancers…navigating around the dance-floor is one of the tricks that we haven’t really mastered yet! I received my silver medal, together with my scores and comment. As expected, the silver medal standard is higher than the bronze, so whilst I still got a “Highly commended”, my marks were down on the previous medal. As usual, there were helpful comments on my dancing, and a certificate.

True Grit

Back before Christmas, all those years ago, we booked a trip to go to the very North of North Island, Cape Reinga. So in the morning we were up with the lark to make sure we didn’t miss the bus that was going to take us there, and various other places of interest along the way. It’s important to make sure you’re outside your accommodation at the allotted time, and at 7:10 we were standing outside our motel for a 7:15 pick-up. The bus turned up, and on we got.

The bus then toured around various other hotels, motels, Holiday Inns etc around Paihia, picking up couples, families, and other parties. At the final stop, only 3 of the expected 5 people boarded. The driver checked around the place, called in at Reception, hung around for 5 minutes, but no sign of the last pair…so off we went. Half an hour down the road he gets a call on the radio, saying that he’d missed a pick-up. Not so, he countered, and told all. So be outside your accommodation on time, or pay the price!

The first port of call was at Kauri Kingdom, which is basically a shop selling kauri artefacts, with café attached, where we had breakfast. The kauri tree, you’ll remember from a couple of days ago, is a New Zealand native pine that grows upwards and then outwards to prodigious girths. Felling of kauri is now illegal, partly due to the significance of the trees to Maori culture. There are around 1% of the original kauri trees left in New Zealand.

So how can a shop sell kauri artefacts and furniture? They are made from what is known as “swamp kauri”, which is dead trees that have been preserved for over 45,000 years in the salt swamps of Northland. It is believed that the trees died because of nearby volcanic activity, and changes in sea levels have helped with their preservation. They are now recovered and worked into finished goods.

Next, we drove to 90 Mile Beach. This beach is classed as a road, and the rules of the road still apply, so you can be ticketed for speeding and other traffic violations whilst on it! It is only passable at a few hours either side of low tide, so the nature of the tour changes daily – on some days, the bus drives down the beach in the afternoon. The beach derives its name from an original estimate made in the 19^th century, when teams of oxen would pull a cart along the beach from one end to the other. It took 3 days, and the rule of thumb was that oxen could cover 30 miles per day. Of course, they hadn’t figured that walking on sand was a bit harder, and when someone finally decided to measure it, it turned out to be only 55 miles long. But as Australia already had an 80 Mile Beach, there was no way that the Kiwis were going to rename it to something less than that, so the name has stayed the same.

We were driving into the teeth of a stiff Northerly, and when we stopped for photos the wind was quite strong – you could see it whipping spray off the breakers crashing on the beach, and sandblasting anyone and anything that stood in its way.

Heavy surf

We hurriedly reboarded the bus, then drove up to the larger dunes, where we had a go at sand surfing. This involves climbing up a dune, then sliding down it on a body-board. Sounds easy, but it’s the climbing up the dune that’s the tricky bit – by the time you arrive at the top you’re knackered! Add to this the continual sand blowing in your face. Once at the top, you catch your breath for a few minutes before launching yourself down the dune on the board, using your toes to steer and brake as needed. Great fun! But one of the side-effects (apart from jelly legs) was that you felt that you were taking half the dune with you as left…and that gritty feeling stayed with us for the rest of the day. One or two people came off their boards, but no-one was hurt…as our driver told us as we drove away, and proceeded to regale us with tales of serious injury sustained whilst sand surfing, most of which appeared to have happened to him.

Faster than a speeding bullet

At this point we left the beach, and rejoined the conventional road to drive up to Cape Reinga. Our guide filled us in on the Maori legends surrounding the cape. As with many similar sites in New Zealand and other parts of the world, the significance to the indigenous people was largely ignored during the 19^th and early part of the 20^th centuries, and it is only more recently that Cape Reinga has been restored and proper facilities installed. As part of the regeneration of the area, there is a programme to plant indigenous wildlife throughout the cape, and we contributed to that by planting a Hebe diosmifolia, for which we now have a certificate.

Planting our plant

We stopped off for lunch, then hit the road again, heading for the Puketi kauri forest. This doesn’t contain the giant specimens of Waipoua forest that we visited on Sunday, but does have a good concentration of mature trees in sub-tropical rainforest. The thick mist we’d encountered at Cape Reinga had turned into drizzle, and then proper rain by the time we reached the forest walk, so we fairly whistled round. If we hadn’t seen Tane Mahuta a couple of days ago we might have been slightly more impressed by the trees. As it was, we were getting towards the end of a long day, and our minds were slightly more focussed on getting into a shower and washing all the sand off. True grit, indeed.

Social Dance

At a quarter to ten this morning we headed down to the Wellington Performing Arts Centre to take our first step on to the ladder of ballroom dancing certification: the Bronze medal 2 dance award, in the social branch. Due to a concatenation of circumstances that Nicola will explain herself, she was unable to do her medal dances, so it was left to me alone to carry the flag. My dancing partner, Shona, led me through the steps beforehand, gave me tips on my “rocking”, and generally put me at ease. I was nervous, but hoped that I acquitted myself well.

Foxtrotting - intense look of concentration!

In the evening, we went to the Masked Ball social dance. We’d been shopping in the afternoon for masks, and had come to the conclusion that masks just don’t work with glasses, so I went unmasked, whilst Nicola chose a peacock feather creation.

Ready to rumba

The format for the social dance is to include dancers of all levels, so there were some basic rock’n’roll numbers that we could do, as well as waltzes and foxtrots. We both felt far more able to participate in these than the last time that we went, when we’d only had four lessons. In the “snowball waltz” I felt confident to pick a partner and lead her around the dance floor, without crashing into other people too many times! Michael, our teacher and organiser of the dance, also led us in some new dances – some of which were beyond us – and also some party games, one of which we almost won! Coming second was as good as coming first, because there wasn’t actually a prize for winning other than the esteem of our fellow dancers.

In amongst the general dances were demonstrations by some of the more advanced dancers, who had been taking medals in levels that we can only dream about! This is what happens when you get into the higher echelons of dancing:

To quick for my camera!

We’ve been dancing now for two terms; within our class group there were only five of us who turned up for the social dance, which was a pity. Still, we will point out the benefits to the rest  of our class when we see them on Thursday, the last lesson in the current term, and we shall be having a “social” of our own afterwards, down the pub. Which pub? Why, the Backbencher, which is where we do our quiz nights! Clearly a popular choice amongst our class – which is not particularly surprising, as the venue where we dance is close to a lot of Government offices; there is a high representation of civil service types amongst our group.

At around 11 o’clock, the lights went up for the awards ceremony: those who had taken tests earlier in the day were awarded their medals, certificates, and also a commentary on their dancing. This is an important part of the process, as you are judged by a senior professional who provides advice and encouragement, pointing out what you’re doing well and what you need to improve on. A while ago, Michael had told us in fairly straightforward terms that he wouldn’t put a person forward to take a medal if there was any possibility of failure – so I was pretty well guaranteed a pass. The only question was what kind of pass would I get?

I can has certickifat!

The lowest medals were awarded first, so those of us from our dance group went up to get our medals and certificates. In our group, we all scored “Highly Commended” (the levels being “Pass”, “Commended”, “Highly Commended”, and “Highly Commended With Honours” – not often awarded to absolute beginners!) so were pretty chuffed with that. We then watched and applauded as everyone else was awarded their medals, and danced a final waltz before heading up the hill to home.

All in all, a great night out. We met some new people from further ahead in the programme, so we have an idea of what we should expect a year down the line as we continue learning. And we had fun! The more we do, the easier it gets, and we have exercises and practice to do before term starts again in January, with new dances to learn.