Musings of the Capoeira kind
Our guests: Mestre Watutsi, Contra Mestre Caracu (Senzala Berlin), Professor Geyson (Escola Makumba Capoeira Angola Paraíba), Graduado Clony (Capoeira Nagô), Graduado Saguim & Graduado Trapézio (Ahmed), Tim, Daniel, Anne, Rene, Patricia, Vikas (Meia Lua Inteira) und mehr!
Mestre Watutsi & Guerreira
It’s like Eddie Gordo got his own game…
Thanks Bordedeira!
Tags: Media
Acrobatics or ‘ floreios’ have always been a part of the game of Capoeira, even in the traditional game of Capoeira Angola. However, with the birth of Capoeira Regional in the 1930s, fast, dynamic acrobatic movements such as the somersault ‘mortal’ were introduced and became an integral part of this new style.
Practitioners of Capoeira Regional are constantly challenging themselves and others with new acrobatic tricks, movements and combinations – check out some examples here! (link to flippin’ 05 or other youtube vids from Capoeira Aruanda students).
Contra Mestre Borracha was born in the state of Acre, in the Amazon region of Brazil and is a founder of Grupo Capoeira Aruanda. In the Capoeira world, the name Borracha is synonymous (pardon the pun, but Borracha is Portuguese for rubber) with acrobatics, as he has been pushing the boundaries of Capoeira acrobatics since he was a small child.
He began his Capoeira journey in 1989 and has since travelled the world sharing his knowledge with students, performing in cultural exhibits and developing his own Capoeira Academy in Sydney, Australia.
Borracha closes off Series 4 with an acrobatics workshop in Daceyville, where he will be showing us the fundamentals of acrobatics for capoeira and giving more advanced and bendy students tips on how to further improve handstands, backflips, macaco’s, sequences and the like.
It’s sure to be a very explosive and fun class and is the final workshop for this season of Roda De Rua, so come along and take advantage of the mats and squishy martial arts floor – all the better for falling on!
Tags: Acro, Roda De Rua
Turning up on time to an Afro dance work shop should be high on any list of priorities; I learnt this the hard way last Sunday as I ambled into Daceyville PCYC, thinking that a 10 minute late stamp should be ok to just slip into the workshop and ‘do whatever’.
Wrong.
Afrodance has slipped into popular culture by the booty shaking antics of Beyonce, it was in this workshop that Marina showed us that booty shakin’ was the least of our worries, what I saw when I wandered into that hall was the collective effort of a group of Capoeiristas being lead through dance steps that needed more co ordination than anything I’ve done in everyday life. Those ten minutes had cost me the first six steps of the routine – and also gave me the realisation that both arms and legs needed to co operate in a way that would make me look both graceful and potentially awesome all at the same time.
But total awesomeness was what we eventually all achieved!Marina broke down each step so that minimal confusion ensued and that butts worked together with out- stretched arms and legs shot forward in a non- Bencao like way. This was all performed in time with Thiago’s drumming on the Atabaque. We learnt to pump our chests, shimmy our shoulders, dance diagonally down and through the hall and well… booty shake our way to Beyonce -like glory all the way to the end.
Not only were we taught the steps to an Afro dance routine, but also the meaning behind why each movement looked the way it did and gave as a small insight into African culture and religion. Roda De Rua Series 4 is turning out to be educational boys and girls! Yeah that’s right, I said it.
On another note, our weekly sun drenched roda down at Coogee has grown in reputation – there are Capoeiristas who are travelling through Sydney stopping by to play the afternoon away with us, on lookers are singing “Paranue” ( this is a personal observation after standing in front of three way too tanned dudes shouting the words in my ears every time the song came up) and more groups joining the fun – with or without good intent.
Thank you to Marina and Thiago, who lead the workshop and also the roda down at Coogee this week in absence of Borracha, it’s always a brilliant time with those guys around! Salve Capoeira!
Tags: Afro Dance, Roda De Rua
Well so far, so good this round of Roda De Rua, we have covered samba, the beats behind samba and funk, and now this week we are tackling another style of dance, Maculelê.
Maculelê is a Brazilian dance form with African roots, it is played with each dancer holding a pair of sticks called grimas, which are traditionally made from the biriba wood. The dancers use the sticks to hit each against one another’s grimas, as well as their own, in tune with the atabaque (Drum). The more daring and experienced dancers perform the dance with machetes rather than sticks, often showing off sparks of light as the knives cross paths, adding to the atmosphere of the dance.
Capoerista’s woke up to a beautiful sunny day in Sydney on Sunday for a little bit of Samba and an awesome day for Roda De Rua at Coogee Beach in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs!
Kicking off the day we headed down to the PCYC at Daceyville (Kingsford) for some music practice, a little bit of play, followed by a very challenging Samba class. The amazing Cristina Ramon took on the challenge that was teaching us a samba routine, and if I thought I was un-coordinated before the class, I KNOW I am definitely un-co now hehe… The class was great fun, and it was fun to see everyone give it a go, trying to shake their booties – trying being the operative word for some of us! Our next challenge, possibly our homework, is to remember the little routine we learnt, a challenge for any worthy capoeirista, but with a few more lessons from the lovely Cristina I think we might just get it down. Read the rest of this entry »
So keep your dancing shoes on Capoeiristas, continuing our workshops this weekend, we are happy to have along brasilian percussion expert, “Timbalada” (Tim), to teach us all the intricacies of the fantastic and energetic style of brazilian drumming!
Tim is an artist from Bahia in Brazil and has danced and played drums since he was a child. He is proficient in numerous styles of Brazilian dance including; Samba, Axe, Lambada, Forro, Lamb-Axe and Lamba-Aerobics. Tim trained in Brazil with the renowned music and performance group Timbalada and studied the Brazilian martial art Capoeira with the group Topazio. He also toured Europe with the Axe BaBa Dance Company in 1999-2000, and whilst in Portugal taught Latin dance at Lisbon University. Since moving to Australia, Tim has taught Latin dance at Newcastle University as well as venues on the Gold Coast, QLD. He is currently performing, teaching dance, and playing percussion in Sydney with his group Brazilian Roots as well as other performance groups in Sydney.
So what will we be learning you might ask? We’ll be giving the batucada drums a bit of a bash. Batucada is a substyle of samba and refers to an African influenced Brazilian percussive style, usually performed by an ensemble, known as a Batería. It is considered by some to be the epitome of the percussive ensemble.
So come on down to the Eastern Suburbs PCYC this Sunday 8th November and get ready to feel the energy as we attempt to play the drums well enough to get the audience dancing, and put the little samba routine we were taught last weekend into practice!
Tags: capoeira, Roda De Rua
It’s that time of year again, we all know that summer is just around the corner when the berimbau begins to sing over Coogee beach and caporeistas from various groups congregate to create an energy that draws in beach goers and passer bys alike. We’ve become somewhat of a staple at Coogee now for the past few summers and I have had a few random people ask where we have disappeared to. Clearly breath stealing winterly cold should not be an ‘excuse’ NOT to be playing capoeira!
Tags: Roda De Rua
Tags: Roda De Rua
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