North and South Magazine, September 2007

Long-time BeatGirl Carolyn McLaughlin

There are plenty of covers group - it's the BeatGirls' energy, timing, humour and crowd interaction that gives them the X-factor. Tagged a "retro" group, the BeatGirls are styled on 60s girl groups, but have a broader repertoire. They sing six decades of music from the Andrews Sisters, the Shirelles and the Beatles to ABBA, Kylie Minogue and Outkast, meshed with polished dance routines. Music's tailored to the listeners' teenagerhood: baby boomers love 60s music, 25-to-late-30-somethings go mad for the 80s.

The BeatGirls have also been dubbed a "parody trio" but, says Sanders, "we don't take the mickey out of the songs - it's just we don't take ourselves too seriously".

(The BeatGirls are neither a franchise nor the same three women. For the troupe's first four years, from 1996, there were three BeatGirls; including Sanders and McLaughlin; since 2000 a pool of girls has made up the performance trio. But Sanders and McLaughlin usually head it up.)

For a decade the troupe's entertained hometown Wellington; the Dominion Post hailed them as being "as Wellington as the bucket fountain", the Cuba Mall water feature that's one of the city's best known landmarks. And they've been booked everywhere from Kerikeri to Bluff.

Feel like you've seen them but not sure where? Probably on TV - recently they've performed on Dancing With The Stars and Good Morning - or at numerous public festival and events.

They've also performed in Singapore, Hong Kong, Greece, Germany, Fiji, Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. When Sanders and Watkins lived in Sydney for three years from 2000, they set up a second-tier BeatGirls trio there, and once they'd moved back organised the Aussie girls from Wellington.

They've even performed at official Olympic parties at the Sydney 2000 games and Athens it 2004. Bands the world over would be elated be elated to be asked, so how did they score these gigs?

In 2000, they were packing up after a Sydney outdoor festival performance when a man from the audience introduced himself as a member of the International Olympic Committee; he asked them to perform for fellow members the following night. They rebooked that day's plane tickets home, and so impressed the committee at the Sydney Olympic Stadium they were offered spots at four official Olympic functions.

The parties -hosted by Sports Illustrated in giant, lit-up marquees opposite the Sydney Harbour Bridge - were attended by hundreds of celebrities, athletes and media representatives. The BeatGirls were such a hit that four years on they were rebooked for the Athens Olympics, again performing at four official events, this time at the trendy seaside club Akrotiri.

"Speed boats kept patrolling to make sure no terrorists in scuba gear were trying to blow the place up," says Sanders. "They even checked our parents to make sure we had no dodgy connections."

The partygoers calling for encores included heavyweight boxing world champ Evander Holyfield, Chelsea Clinton, and Sex And The City stars Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall. US media heavyweight Katie Couric, host of The Today Show, immediately booked them. Two days later at the show's open-air studio outside the Athens stadium, the BeatGirls were introduced by Couric as "the hottest ticket in town" and beamed live to 140 million viewers.

Following that appearance, US corporates started phoning, and they were booked for gigs in Miami, Palm Beach, Colorado and San Francisco. The offers - more than they can handle given the Iong distance flights and jetlag - keep rolling in. Later this year they perform in South Africa, Las Vegas and Kentucky.

Sanders plans to franchise the BeatGirls, first in the US then Japan, but she and Watkins aren't rushing the masterplan.

 

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