Songs involving a leader-and-
response pattern are sung during play.
The words of these songs embody, to take
a few examples, comments on capoeira in
general, insults directed toward various
types of styles of play or types of players,
and biographical allusions to famous
capoeiristas. The sense of capoeira as a
dance is established by this musical frame
for the action and completed by the
movements taking place within the roda.
The basic stance of capoeira places one
foot forward in a lunging move with the
corresponding hand forward and the
other hand back. There is, however, con-
siderable variety in the execution of the
stance (both between individual players
and between the Regional and the Angola
traditions), and stances rapidly shift, with
feet alternating in time to the tempo of
the musical accompaniment in a dance-
like action called a ginga.The techniques
of capoeira rely heavily on kicks, many of
them embodied in spectacular cartwheels,
somersaults, and handstands. Players move from aerial techniques to low
squatting postures accompanied by sweeps or tripping moves. Evasion rather
than blocking is used for defense. Head-butts and hand strikes (using the open
hand) complete the unarmed arsenal of the capoeirista. Again, there is a dis-
tinction between Angola and Regional, with the former relying more on low
kicks, sweeps, and trips, played to a slower rhythm.
As an armed fighting art, capoeira has incorporated techniques for the
use of paired short sticks and bladed weapons (particularly straight razors,
knives, and machetes). Even in those cases in which the art has moved from
the streets to the training hall, training in weapons remains in the curricu-
lum in forms such as maculêlê, which entails a rhythmic clash of short
sticks while performing a dancelike action.
In the 1970s capoeira spread to the United States. Mestres Jelon Viera
and Loremil Machado brought the art to New York in 1975, and by 1979
Bira Almeida began teaching in California. Other mestres from both major
traditions followed suit—for example Mestre Cobra Mansa (Cinezio Feli-
ciano Pecanha) of the International Capoeira Angola Foundation in Wash-
ington, D.C., who visited and eventually moved to the United States in the64 Capoeira
An acrobatic kick
from a one-handed
handstand, a
signature move of
capoeira, November
14, 1996. (Julie
Lemberger/Corbis)