3Ness: Booiaka!
Slogans are in. On the bikes it was all about ‘don’t just ride, feel the Vibe!’ Saturday’s highlight, when I was awake, was jumping around, shaking my ass and shouting ‘Booiaka!’ No, I don’t know what it means either, but trust me, that stopped no-one.
But my enthusiasm for Booiaka has me running ahead. Saturday was the morning of the alleged 6:30am run ‘with all presenters’, dubiously advertised as a ‘pain free morning activity for all before breakfast’. Let’s be fair: I was at 3Ness to experience the event. If the poor presenters had to be out of bed at 6:29am, I could be too. And besides, Paul had arranged a wake-up phone call to every single participant for 6am.
Some people thought he was joking. I didn’t. I took my phone off the hook, set my alarm for 6:20am and justified an ‘early’ (ie midnight) bed time, sans party, based on an early morning. By 4am, when I still hadn’t slept a decent wink in the last four hours, I changed my alarm for 7:30am. Turns out my dedication has limits.
So I missed the early morning run, but by the sounds of things, so did most people and most presenters. A lot of people did not miss the 6am wake up call though.
As I dragged my sorry sleepless carcass to breakfast, I passed a dude working up to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine physique (fortunately minus sideburns) telling his mate about this immensely painful massage he’d endured on the Friday. The masseuse in question had hands of steel, if he was to be believed. Naturally I immediately concluded: I gotta get me one of them. 3Ness offers any number of pamper treatments, and it was my job, after all, to experience such delights. I made a booking for that afternoon.
Now I wanted to start the day with belly dancing with the one and only Sunny Singh, he of the immensely shakeable booty, but I faced one of many scheduling dilemmas, in this case against Capoeira. How much do I love Capoeira? Quite a lot. How well can I do Capoeira? A whole lot better than belly dancing. I felt the need to ease into the day, so Capoeria with Beko it was. I fell a little in love with Beko too (recurring theme of the weekend. It’s summer time, after all) and have enormous respect for the manner in which he coached a room full of beginners into a combination of the ginga, two esquivas, role and aú in 40 minutes.
When I was learning Capoeira with Cordão de Ouro, I just had to learn from watching a mixed level group. With Beko assuming no knowledge at all, I was surprised at how uncomplicated the moves are when broken down from simple exercises to proper moves. Beko could be my Mestre any day – if he wasn’t in jolly North London.
Then it was Booiaka. Booiaka was an activity I’d initially circled, then crossed off after the Friday introductions for two reasons: I fell a little in love (yes, again, get used to it) with Cassius Frankson so wanted to stalk him in his Jungle Cycle class; and Tatiana Tamai kind of frightened me during her Friday night introduction. It must have been nearly 11pm, the football had sucked me of all will to live, she had a microphone which, like me, she really didn’t need, and mostly, bless her, Tatiana was very, very American. Even though she’s part Italian. We were supposed to shout ‘Booiaka’ while slowly congealing into our seats post-buffet dinner. I wasn’t feeling it.
But it seemed I wasn’t the only one who wanted to stalk Cassius, so when turned away from his rammed cycle session, I went and developed an unexpected girl-crush on Tatiana instead. Tatiana is an Italian/LA hybrid of extreme femininity, packed in a loud, explosive package. Even though I watched her on stage and genuinely considered her to be pretty much every I am not – sexy, confident, clever and co-ordinated – her sheer wall of self-belief permeated throughout the room. She could dance, and therefore so could we. And dance we did, dammit! It was the most empowering single hour of the weekend. I loved it. Her enthusiasm was infectious and I was right there shouting Booiaka! as loud as the next person.
Then at some point years of inhibited self-consciousness caught up with me – pretty much when I realised that hiding at the back of the room placed me directly in front of the 3Ness camera. Reality came crashing back into my world. I stopped dancing and took some photos instead, and like the rest of the crowd gathered around the walls of the room, had a little laugh at the gals – and even the odd brave guy – trying to shake their booty with varying success. But you know what? However much they were laughing at themselves, they were all having a hoot. Even the guys. They were laughing harder than the observers. Screw watching. I dumped the camera and jumped back into the fray – although I hope to high heaven that none of that footage ever sees the light of day. I suspect I’m safe – it would surely be such a traumatic vision they’d consider it bad publicity.