It seems that it was only yesterday, but a whole year has passed since the last Festa Major in Sydney, organised by the Casal Català de NSW. Today we achieved something that one year ago we wouldn’t have even dreamed of! And we counted with the exceptional presence of Koales de Melbourne, being the first performance in Sydney with two colles castelleres. But let’s start from the very beginning, because this Festa Major had plenty of surprises, adrenaline, excitement and celebration time.
The day started at 10 am at Rodd Park with a nice hot chocolate and a traditional single vs married soccer game, followed by “balls de bastons” (a Catalan traditional stick dance). Yes, Sydney not only has castellers, but also very motivated bastoners! Exporting Catalan culture everywhere we go...
As soon as the dances finished, it was our turn to perform. The excitement (and some nerves) was huge when our cap de colla announced that we would start with the 3d6. We had been practicing this castell for months, climbing until dosos in a couple of occasions. But in the last rehearsals, the 3of5 clean was a bit shakier than what we would have liked, so we knew that this tower represented a big challenge for us. As soon as Pau ended calling the pinya, the segons climbed on top of the baixos. The tower looked very good; so terços climbed as well, followed immediately by the dosos. At this stage, the 3 had a very nice rounded shape and a full confidence in the tower suddenly took all members of the colla. Especially when we heard Pau saying “Elsa is in position, Ainhoa starting the 3 steps”. Wait… what? Our canalla is already up there? They were so fast that even before we realised what was going on, we could hear everybody clapping at the aleta and our enxaneta was already going down very smoothly on the rengla. And just like this we got our first 3d6 ever! No suffering, the pinya was a solid rock, nobody moved at all. All the rehearsals with pinya for the 3d6 paid off! It even felt a bit “too easy”…
With our confidence 100% back, we started building the pinya for the next castell. The plan was to repeat the 4d6 that we did in September, but with new castellers making more than half of the main structure. The castell started with a good squared shape and everything went quite well until the enxaneta was close to crown the tower. At that moment, everything started to shake and the terços and segons lost their initial position. Only with big teamwork from the tronc and a comparable effort from the pinya, the tower was completed, followed by the celebration of the whole colla. After all, repeating again a 4d6 -and with so many new members- was a big achievement!
On the third round, we wanted to try another new castell: the 4d6 with the pillar. We had done the 4d5p clean many times in the rehearsal, but we had never had enough people to rehearse neither the whole pinya nor the transition of the hands from the 4 to the pillar. In the previous castell, we had seen how critical it is to get a trained pinya and a perfect squared shape, so we decided to take it easy this time. For this reason, when the dosos were already climbing the terços and the squared shape of the 4 was lost, we decided to demount it and try again.
On the second attempt, the castell looked significantly better and dosos were fine until our two little girls started to climb. A bit too early, the castell lost its shape at the terços level, making its defence close to an epic effort from every single casteller. There were screams from the crouches in the pinya encouraging everyone to hold on, hands pushing upwards to hold the seconds, dosos showing an incredible balance and an outstanding performance of our little aixecadora who did not hesitate and stepped on the pillar, despite being our wobbliest castell ever. Being very careful to not touch the pillar, the four started to climb down, leaving a solid pillar of four. But there was no need to worry, because this pillar even turned, showing the skills of our pilaners and triggering a huge ovation the crowd watching us, now convinced that we were very close to complete our first full performance ever. As soon as everybody was back on the floor, the celebration started and everyone hugged each other, with the biggest smiles we had on that day.
But the performance was not over (yet!). As we said at the beginning, we were very lucky to have Koales de Melbourne with us and we were all looking forward to the first brotherhood tower (or castell de germanor, as we call it in Catalonia) between the two Australian colles. No need to say that our first 4d5 was a success and we hope that we’ll repeat it very soon. We completed the performance with a vano de 4, also together with the Koales. Castellers de Sydney would like to thank the koales who came all the way from Melbourne and helped us making this day unforgettable. We are looking forward to our next performance together!
Looking back at the pictures of the last Festa Major, it’s impossible to not smile and feel proud of what we achieved in one year. Not only because our aixecador and enxaneta in 2017 are now dosos (and our new enxaneta and aixecadora are just amazing), but also because we managed to make exactly the same performance…but one level higher! And, what is even more important and makes us feel very proud is that our colla is now more than 3 times larger!
We can’t be prouder of our colla! Congratulations, castellers!
Let’s celebrate it soon at the Gure Txoko!
Castells: 3d6, 4d6, (id)4d6p, 4d6p, 4d5 germanor, vano de 4
