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A dangerous dance
Capoeristas bring Brazilian combat to Auraria
By Adam Goldstein
goldstea@mscd.edu

Photo by Heather A. Longway-Burke/longway@mscd.edu Mestre Jelon Vieira, founder and artistic director of the Capoeira Foundation and Dance Brasil instructs students at the first batizado held by Denver Capoeira in the Tivoli Turnhalle, July 14.

A pair of combatants face off, encircled by a ring of more than 30 fervent onlookers.

The rhythm of reedy percussion resounds as the onlookers sing in unison. The vibrant and urgent soundtrack spurs the fighters in the center, who whirl and spin to the pulse of the music. They kick with elaborate cartwheels and block with acrobatic flourishes.

In this ring, the combat is tied inextricably to the music. Here, the ability to flip and spin in time is just as important as the ability to exchange blows.

“We meditate when we hear that music and when we move our body,” Capoeira instructor Gavia Fierros said.

Capoeira is a martial art melded into a physical art form, a graceful dance that functions as a dangerous attack.

From July 12 to 15, Auraria hosted the Denver’s first Batizado, a gathering that featured instruction, workshops and performances by Capoeira novices and experts from all over the world. It was a chance for new students to gain a ceremonial welcome into the Capoeira community and a proving ground for advanced students to progress in their rank.

The Batizado, or “baptism” in Portuguese, is a rite of passage for the students of Capoeira, complete with a naming ceremony. The ceremony is deeply tied to the martial art’s history; in order to progress to higher ranks, students are versed in the discipline’s past, its instrumentation and its discipline.

“All the instructors are originally from Brazil and have come to Denver from all over the U.S.,” Fierros said.

Fierros and his fellow instructors have turned a fledgling group into a vibrant community. Capoeira Denver has an offshoot society and holds weekly instruction sessions at Studio Soma, 2540 W. 29th St. The Batizado represents the culmination of a sustained effort to build the discipline’s following.

“We’ve tried to make this happen for six or seven years, and we finally did,” Fierros said. “It will continue every year, and we’re going to try to keep it on the same date.”

The event marks a celebration of community and a collective nod to history. Participants in the Batizado are keenly aware of Capoeira’s agonized roots and tortured story of survival.

“We are lucky to have Capoeira,” Fierros said. “There have been a lot of Capoeristas that have been persecuted, that were chased down, that were killed.”

Borne of the slave trade as a subversive means to win freedom, the martial art has retained both its rhythmic camouflage and its fierce underpinnings. Although its exact origins have remained a subject of debate among historians and scholars, it is agreed that Capoeira was a cultural child of the Pan-African slave trade.

The martial art drew on elements from traditional African dance, even as it blossomed in the foreign climate of Brazil. A major stop in the slave trade triangle, Brazil became a melting pot and a birthplace, a site that would draw on diverse cultural influences to forge novel expressions.

In Capoeira, the cartwheels that masked combat also disguised a yearning for freedom. It was a dangerous mixture; even after the official statute outlawing the dance was lifted in 1890, Capoeira continued to hold a cultural stigma.

“My mother didn’t want me to learn Capoeira,” said Jelon Vieira, a pioneer in bringing the martial art to the United States.

Despite the warnings, he began studying in earnest at age 10.

In its birthplace of Bahia, a city in northeast Brazil, Capoeira was still maligned and misunderstood. “It was forbidden. It is an (African) art, and at that time, anything that was black was bad. Capoeira was forbidden, only done by street gangs,” said Vieira.

As a Capoeira “mestre”, Portuguese for “master”, Vieira traveled to New York in 1975 to spread his art form to an American audience. Speaking no English and touting a completely foreign discipline, the Capoerista relied on displays of his prowess to attract students.

“The art didn’t get popular until I started going to open martial arts tournaments,” Vieira said. “I never won anything because I was always disqualified. People didn’t know how to fight me. But, from the way I fought, I gained a lot of respect and a lot of students.”

Another Brazilian started teaching in San Francisco and word began to spread. 31 years after Vieira arrived in New York, there are Capoerista schools in most major cities in the United States.
For Capoeristas like Fierros, the art form has proven more than a mere fighting style.

“10 years ago, I was going to high school and I didn’t have anything to look forward to,” he said. I was a kid who was probably going to work a dead-end job for the rest of my life. This is how I found my passion.”

Many of the Batizado’s participants displayed a similar commitment to the unique art form. Its disciplines run the gamut, from physical to intellectual.

“Capoeira has qualities that you can’t find in any other martial art,” Vieira said. “You learn Portuguese, you learn to play percussion, you learn movement, you learn philosophy, you learn history. Your body becomes your weapon.”