Music and sports at the Pukkelpop music festival

Bossaball showed how music and sports are to be combined at the 2015 Pukkelpop music festival in Belgium! This year’s edition marked the 30th anniversary of the festival, which was highlighted by acts such as Netsky, Bastille, Major Lazer and Rudimental. 

Pukkelpop is known in the for its wide variety of alternative music, spanning styles such as rock, pop, electronic, dance, hip-hop, punk and heavy metal. The event’s organizers aim the festival to be a “progressive and contemporary” musical event, this is perhaps why they brought bossaball to Hasselt, the home town of the second largest music festival in Belgium. The festival that was visited this year by around 150,000 festival goers, featured two campsites and this is where the two bossaball courts found their place. The campsites were the stages of the bossaball show matches between the two teams from Belgium and the Netherlands, which had come to exhibit the sport right in the heart of each campsite.

On a music festival, what would bossaball be without proper shows of the samba referees?! Well, definitely not the real deal! The two samba referees, Roberto Rivera García and Taman Autar, juiced up the crowds with their newest set, taking both the pukkelpoppers and the bossaballeiros to a higher level.

On one hand, it was the 30th edition of Pukkelpop. On the other hand though, may we not forget that 2015 as well marks the 10th anniversary of bossaball. Bossaball visited a music festival during its first summer and yes, it was the same one: Pukkelpop 2005! After 10 years, a time in which the sport had reinvented itself various times, bossaball had come back to Hasselt to invite everybody on the two campsites to play and experience the mix of volleyball, football and gymnastics! Throughout the three days on the two campsites, hundreds of festival goers tried bossaball and sat down on the stands to watch the thrilling matches that were played every hour between Bossaball Belgium and Bossaball Netherlands. The teams were supported by two players from Bossaball Argentina and Bossaball South Africa, which had come to take part in bossaball’s European summer season.

Pukkelpop is an alternative festival in every sense. That is why they lay emphasis on their impact on the environment and make an effort to keep it as small as possible. For instance, they even set up a festival inside the festival: the Baraque Futur, an expo that was focussed on recycled products and renewable energy. Well, we thought this would be a great setting for the first sport that recycles itself, so we presented bossaball’s first official merchandising line of bags, all of them made out of recycled bossaball courts and its PVC!

Bossaball found its place in the The Pukkelpop Times, the official festival magazine, where it was promoted as one of the official camp site activities!

The Pukkelpop Times, 19/08/2015

SPORT, MUZIEK & BRAZILIAANSE VIBES

Kom jij als energieke sportieveling niet aan je trekken in één discipline? Ben je iemand die zowel wil voetballen, volleyballen als turnen en dan ook liefst nog tegelijk trampoline springen? Dan is Bossaball helemaal je ding!

Bossaball is een zomerse sport die ontstaan is op de stranden van Rio de Janeiro en waarbij de muziek altijd centraal staat. Het woord Bossaball is dan ook afgeleid van de Braziliaanse muziekstroming Bossanova, hete en ritmische tunes die geen spier in je lijf onberoerd laten. De immense Bossaball luchtkussens zijn van ver zien op de campings. Kom gerust langs om het feestgedruis van de avond voordien uit je lichaam te zweten, en doe zelf mee of supporter voor het Belgische of Nederlandse nationale Bossabalteam. Zij strijden de komende dagen voor de felbegeerde Pukkelpop Cup!19/08/2015

Press releases about our exhibitions at the 2015 Pukkelpop festival:

Het belang van Limburg, 20/08/2015

Zelfs op de camping van Pukkelpop wordt de nodige randanimatie voorzien. Dit jaar wordt er ook aan de sportievelingen gedacht. Bent jij wat atletisch aangelegd? Neem dan zeker deel aan bossaball. Deze combinatie van volleybal, voetbal, gymnastiek en capoeira wordt gespeeld op luchtkussen en trampolines. Dat zorgt voor spectaculaire beelden.