Features

Capoeira

Dancing, fighting, playing—an Afro-Brazilian tradition

by Marjorie Clarkson
Photos by Julie Wiatt

Why is Montgomery Blair high-school student Samantha Mayer playing a centuries old African-Brazilian martial arts game?

"It is challenging and fun" and "you get really into it," she explained between panted breaths.

"Really into it" is how the expressions of all the players of Capoeira could be described: they sat in a circle on the floor, a "roda," sang Portuguese "corridos," and intently watched fellow players perform, with animal-like quickness and slow graceful beauty, a complex dance of feint and cooperation, imitation and surprise. The players remained silent as they executed their moves. Moves that looked to me like they were borrowed from gymnastics, break-dancing, and nature films of staring, circling and fighting animals. But blood and bruises did not mar the seeming peacefulness of this scene.

"Beautiful to watch" is how Gastavo Faigenbaun describes the strange combinations of movements he has been learning in Capoeira classes for the past five months. Faigenbaun, a native Argentinean, takes classes twice a week at the International Capoeira Angola Foundation (ICAF) on 4th Street, N.W., DC. He told me the history of the game also drew him to it:

"It is related to African dance as practiced by slaves in their resistance … slaves escaped from plantations [in Brazil] and set up autonomous communities. It was self-defense."

In Capoeira, Roots of the Dance-Fight Game author Nestor Capoeira quotes famous mestre Pastinha (1889-1981):

The role of the "mestre," the master teacher, is vital in capoeira because the movements and philosophy are taught orally. Photographs of dead mestres hang on the walls of the 4th Street studio and names of living ones adorn tee-shirts worn by players. Mestre Cobra Mansa’s name appeared on the yellow shirts worn by the DC’s ICAF students. A native of Brazil, he founded the International Capoeira Angola Foundation in Washington DC in 1995. Mestre Cobra Mansa did not attend the "roda" I saw. He was out of the country traveling to one of the many ICAF national and international branches.

Adjusting to various playing styles must be an important aspect of the game taught by a "mestre" to his students. Each of the several games I saw displayed a distinctive mood and personality. I asked player Fabio Melo about these style differences. He, like other players, made an analogy between a person’s behavior in the "roda" and their behavior in life:

"Like in daily life. One cannot choose in daily life who they will deal with. Adjust your game, your aggression and your mood."

The Portuguese songs, the "corridos," also influence the mood of each game. If the music is faster, so are the movements, according to player Matthew Berg. The music is performed by the players. They move between the roles of observers, players and musicians: interchangeably sitting and watching the game, performing in the circle, or playing one of instruments. The central instrument, the "berimbau" is a long one-stringed bow with a gourd attached to the bottom. Other instruments are the "atabaque"— a drum, "pandeiro" — a tamborine, "agogo"— a cowbell, and a "reco reco" — a hollow round object which is rubbed to produce a grating sound. Students of Capoeira learn not just a sport, but how to play musical instruments and sing Portuguese chanting songs:

Mestre Pastinha tells how, in the old days, a small sickle sharpened on both sides would be attached to the end of the berimbau in order to create a deadly instrument: ‘In the moment of truth it would cease to be a musical instrument and would turn into a hand sickle.’ Thus the instrument, like the game of Capoeira itself, contained within itself two antagonistic poles: music and death, dance and fight, beauty and violence.

The Little Capoeira Book by Nestor Capoeira. Today, Capoeira is not a deadly contest but an action-art played by an estimated one million people in Brazil and many thousands in America and Western Europe. Seventy to seventy-five students take classes at the Takoma Park studio, and the number is growing, according to Sylvia Robinson, the studio’s administrator.

Within its spirit, Capoeira holds trickery, skill, competition, grace, energy, stamina, quickness, aggression and humor. This fascinating "dance-fight-game" can be enjoyed just by watching it; but in order to understand it one enthusiastic student told me, "You have to learn to play."