The Rio World

Dance till you drop (the other guy)

by Michelle Chihara

photos by Geoffrey Kula

If you're ever come across a troupe of Brazilians drumming, singing, and kicking outdoors in Harvard Square, you might not have known exactly what you were looking at. A dance form? A cult? A fight?

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It's actually a martial art, one of Brazil's most distinctive cultural phenomena. Capoeira doesn't look much like most martial arts; it incorporates music, and the best players spend a good part of their time inverted -- walking on their hands, turning flips, and delivering flying kicks. It's sometimes described as a folkloric dance form.

Capoeira (pronounced "ca-PWEH-ra") is meant to be hard to peg. It's said to have evolved among African slaves on Brazilian sugar plantations in the 18th century; the slaves, forbidden to practice self-defense, developed a martial art that could be disguised as dancing. Until the 1920s in Brazil, capoeira was associated with a violent lower class. Criminals lashed out at police by kicking with razors between their toes, and it was actually banned in Rio de Janeiro until the early part of this century.

In its modern incarnations, capoeira is almost contact-free, as well as entirely devoid of razor blades. Players stand or sit in a circle (a roda, pronounced "hoda") and clap and sing while two people spar in the center. The rhythm and pace are set by the berimbau, a long, twangy one-stringed instrument made from a gourd and a wooden neck.

Sparring capoeiristas throw lighting-fast kicks one over the other, like pieces of a fluid puzzle. Unlike jujitsu, another martial art popular in Brazil, capoeira is not based on throwing people to the floor. Players flip, spin, and slide in and around each other's moves until one player can slip a well-placed foot under his opponent and kick her off balance. Otherwise, they almost never make contact.

You "do" jujitsu; you "play" capoeira. Still, you don't mess with a master. Skilled capoeiristas exhibit a staggering level of flexibility, stamina, and power. (Trendy gyms in New York City and California have started to offer classes in capoeira, attracted to its grace and constant motion.) Players praise each other's relative "malice."

Yes, capoeira can be used as self-defense. But for those who love the game, it's much more than that. Capoeiristas see the roda as a metaphor for life. Consequently, there are as many styles of capoeira as there are ways of living. A true capoeirista trains with a mestre, or master, and different masters may agree about nothing except the need to be clever, and to play from the heart. Almost any mestre, however, will tell you, "Capoeira is a way of life." Which means, of course, that life is a game.