WHAT IS CAPOEIRA?
…a fight; a dance; a sport; a game; a unique form of artistic expression.
Capoeira is the Brazilian martial art which blends fighting with dance, music and acrobatics and it is growing rapidly in popularity throughout the world.
Capoeira appeals to many people for many different reasons. First of all there is the pure aesthetic beauty of the movement of the human form. Then there is the fact that capoeira is a dance, a fight and a game simultaneously; that it is not only a combination of gymnastics, dance and martial arts but also music, culture, history and knowledge.
Capoeira offers a wealth of social skills like as self-discipline, respect and camaraderie. Capoeira is fun, exciting and unique. It is also incredibly addictive!
History Born out of slavery and oppression, capoeira’s roots lie in the first part of the 16th Century during the formation of a new Portuguese colony: Brazil. After failing to enslave the indigenous population to work on sugarcane and cotton plantations, the Portuguese settlers began to import slave labour from Africa. It was here in captivity on the other side of the Atlantic that rival african tribes started to teach each other their religion, dance, rituals and games. The result of this rich cultural fusion was the birth of the earliest forms of Capoeira
In the mid-1600s widespread fighting broke out between the Portuguese and rival Dutch settlers and the slaves finally saw their chance for freedom. As the slave owners fought for control of the land, many of the slaves escaped to the forests where they formed massive independent communities, known as quilombos, the most famous of which was Quilombo dos Palmares.
The quilombos were very important to the evolution of capoeira. They had internal socio-economic organisations and commercial relationships with neighbouring cities. Because of the consistency and type of threat present, capoeira developed its structure as a fight in the quilombos. The embryo of capoeira as a rudimentary fighting style was undoubtedly created in the slaves' quarters but it was in the quilombos that it truly developed into a ‘dance of freedom’.
Capoeira has been practiced as a martial art, a game, a fight, a dance, a way of life and a unique form of artistic expression since that era. Nothing, it seems, was able to quash it, not even a law banning its practice in 1892. In the 1930s and 40s the first registered capoeira schools were opened in Brazil by Mestre Bimba and Mestre Pastinha and in 1974 it was finally recognised as the national sport of Brazil.
Since the 1970s capoeira has exploded onto the international scene along with other aspects of Brazilian culture. Over the last three decades capoeira has evolved rapidly as a martial art, an art form and a sport in its own right. Thousands upon thousands of capoeira associations, academies and groups exist today as its practice has spread to some 130 countries. Who knows where the game will lead us….watch this space.
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