Women Who Kick, Capoeira Style
Q&A with CanePiece
Sitting at a cafe in D.C. on a cool summer day. These three women sitting with me were hard to get a hold of. A natural inclination for anyone playing capoeira. They lead very active lives. Beautiful, smart, conscious, and strong are a few of the words that describe these artists. You better beware however, for these women are also malandra* in a roda* and they will trip you and laugh!
MH: Please share your names with our readers?
K: I'm Katie.
D: Deepa.
F: Felicia.
MH: Do you have any titles or special names in your group?
F: No.
D: No.
K: No I don't.
MH: You guys don't have nick-names!
D: They do!
K: [LAUGHING]
F: [SMILING] Deepa if you're going to disturb our answers we're gonna be upset.
MH: Why are you lying? Tell me your nick-name.
F: No.
K: They aren't real nick-names.
F: Why do you ask?
MH: I just want to know what you go by. Maybe you don't go by...
F: I'm Felicia.
MH: I mean, Cobra goes by Cobra Mansa*.
(*COBRA MANSA IS A LIVING LEGEND IN CAPOEIRA)
K & D: [LAUGH]
F: When people call me other things I don't respond.
MH: Okay. I see. So the nick-name actually nicks you.
K: That's right it has the opposite effect.
MH: So why aren't any of you ladies afraid of being kicked in the face?
F: Capoeira's a game so the ultimate objective is not to kick people in the face. So because it is embedded in the way that we practice and play capoeira there's not that fear that it is going to happen to you. Sometimes it can happen by accident but we know that the people we are training with have developed a way of controlling their movements so that it's usually not very painful. And if you are worried that the person is that kind of person, there are ways that you could avoid playing that person.
MH: [AT DEEPA] I've heard you've been kicked in the face.
D: I have. I had my nose broken three months into capoeira. I never really thought about that. It didn't scare me off.
MH: The reason why I am asking is that I asked some women if they knew what capoeira was. They said, "Oh that Brazilian karate thing, I'd be scared of getting kicked in the face." So it made me wonder, because some people have that initial fear of contact. If it were karate it could be the same thing, not wanting to be hit. Whereas you all are braver than the average person.
K: Or the opposite.
MH: [LAUGHING] or crazier.
D: I think you start to trust your instincts more. Sometimes you get this sense, for whatever reason, maybe I should end this game now. I think in retrospect those signs were there and I ignored them. So I trust that now and go with it.
K: I think it is tough. Capoeira is tough. The people that stick with it, that appeals to them in some way. It helps you deal with things better when you are exposed to it. I did different martial arts before so it appeals to me in some way. So even if it is not a kick in the face, I will always remember Felicia's first class, it was four hours long. It was tough. Our head was on the floor, grinding our head on the floor, on a concrete floor. We are welcoming in that people can drop by but it is difficult in a lot of ways. It is not going to be like a yoga class.
MH: So what brought you all to capoeira?
F: It just appealed to me. I saw it and it appealed to me for different reasons, the music, the style of the movement, the philosophy behind it.
MH: The philosophy! That means that you really got into it somehow.
F: You know I saw it and I didn't really think about it for a long time and I had studied other philosophy and history from the region capoeira is from, Central Africa and someone had mentioned to me come to this class and I went there and I realized it was the same thing I had seen before. I just keep going.
D: I had seen it when I was abroad in Argentina, and I had never heard of it. When I went back to where I was in school it started appearing everywhere. When I went to the first class the thing that appealed to me was the community aspect. The team. I grew up very focused on team sports, playing soccer was my life. The community. Seeing that that existed really appealed to me. That sense of community.
K: I had generally heard about capoeira. Before capoeira I had done muay thai and gotten pretty into it, I remember after an event someone came up to me and said you really have to have more fun. It was someone who had done capoeira. So I thought about it for a bit and I was looking for some outlet that combined certain things that appealed to me. I lived in central africa for a few years so certainly that music and philosophy definitely was a big part of it.
MH: Which country?
K: Gabon.
MH: Cool. So name the trickiest woman you ever faced in a roda?
[DEEPA AND KATIE LAUGH]
F: Contramestre Alcione.
D: I don't know that's hard.
K: I know!
F: [AT DEEPA] Think about all of the women that you know. Which one gave you the hard time?
MH: Is this pride, like I don't want to give in and say?
D: No!
K: [LAUGHS]
D: Contramestre Gege comes to mind because she is the one that I have had the most contact with. It has been a long time since I have traveled so I can't remember.
K: From Nzinga Grupo there's two Mestras Janja and Paulinha and they are always very tricky and beautiful not necessarily through power but trickiness, that always stands out. Then we have this one [MOTIONING TOWARDS FELICIA] she is definitely one of the trickiest. I think.
D: Yeah she is.
F: I'm slow.
MH: Have you ever been involved in an all female roda, or does that not happen?
D: She's been wanting that for a long time.
K: She has her views about that.
F: Our group has [PAUSE] our group about ten years ago, our mestre was instrumental in pushing women to the forefront in capoeira. They created a pattern of always celebrating "International Women's Day" in capoeira. They would have conferences, the full instrument ensemble and the first few games were all women. But I have never been where the whole roda was just women unless it was accidental. One interesting thing with our group in D.C. is that the women are the most consistent people in the group. A lot of times when we train there are more women than men and on many occasions there are only women in the classroom. I don't know why that is.
MH: Is that answer the same for all of you?
D & K: Yeah
D: She's our fearless leader.
MH: You're not being held back from saying what you feel out of deference are you?
K: [LAUGHS] No.
D: She'll kick our ass!
MH: So tell me about your life pre-capoeira and how it has changed because of it.
F: Pretty much since I started capoeira it has been the central structure in my life.
MH: It's a lifestyle changing thing.
F: I think it is if you consistently practice. If you practice every week it does change your lifestyle. For me within the first two years I started assisting my mestre as he was teaching children's programs and it was so much fun and I enjoyed it. It was what I was doing as daily activity working with kids then in the evening I would do capoeira. So it has consumed the majority of what I do.
D: Soccer was such a big part of my life and was my whole identity and I had an injury and couldn't play anymore and I think I had this serious void in my life for that in between period. In retrospect it feels like it was meant to happen. That is how I found capoeira. I can account for where I am today because of decisions I've made whether its geography cities I've chosen to live because of capoeira, certainly friendships, even the work I do right now, there is a lot that capoeira taught me. Even in the search for my own identity.
K: I think capoeira brought balance to my life. We all have school and work and know people but that community, the relationships especially with women. The strongest women I know are in capoeira. All of us are drawn to the other cultures that we encounter and in capoeira it is encouraged. It's this amazing growth that you see in other people too not just yourself. A lot of us travel for work and we go to Mozambique and to Europe and there are capoeira groups, and you meet more people and you have this connection.
MH: You guys are very introspective and deep. I am learning much here. Are there politics in capoeira?
F: Yes.
K & D: [LAUGHING]
F: There are. It is unavoidable, in any group or organization there's politics and ours is such that the way our mestre has organized our organization is that it is a sorta democracy. Democracy breeds debate and when you share power with people you have to argue before you come to a consensus.
MH: Power being the funds or the time spent?
F: For our group it is about vision and how you are going to manifest that vision that has been laid out.
MH: Anyone else want to comment on the politics in F.I.C.A. DC?
K & D: No [LAUGHING]
MH: So are all of the women friends?
K & D: [NODDING WITH GENUINE SMILES]
F: I would say so. Some have stronger connections with each other but that's normal.
D: The thing with capoeira is that energy is felt by everybody, especially since we're sweating together, we're spending a lot of time together, you know the nature of what we're doing. Every random person that you meet [PAUSE] it's not like you'd embrace them but at the same time there is the balance of the collective and the individual. You have an obligation to keep the family tight and together.
MH: Smells. Some people...
D: [LAUGHS] Oh my goodness!
MH: smell a certain way when they sweat.
D: [LAUGHING] This is hilarious.
MH: And you guys are very close, up under each other. You got your arms outstretched under arms exposed. Your legs up in the air and a strangers head all up under you...
K & D: [LAUGHING]
MH: Tell me about these close contacts with some people you may have never met before, or even the people you may know who have a particular smell?
D: Or leave a puddle.
MH, K, & D: [LAUGH]
F: [CRACKS A SMILE] I think every capoeirista learns in the first year and has had a very stinky shirt because when you do capoeira you get drenched. You take this ugly colored yellow shirt and after capoeira you put it in your bag and you go home and you forget about it.
D: [LAUGHING]
F: A day or two days later you wash it. It smells okay when it comes out of the wash. When you go to train and that little bit of sweat goes into it, all of a sudden its like WOW! Most capoeiristas figure it out, not to ball it up and put it inside of your bag and leaving it like that. Most of us have an understanding and recognize when a new guy comes with the stinky shirt and they're like, "haha you're gonna figure this one out." Besides the moldy stinky shirt, by the way the shirt's expensive so you're not gonna keep buying shirts. We all learn the hard way and have had experience with that stinky shirt which makes us, what's the word amenable...
D: Sensitive.
F: Sympathetic to this problem. Though one mestre, Valmir, he will tell you, you stink.
D: You get to know people's scent really intimately. You can walk in and tell, so and so is in class today. Some people have very strong ones.
K: One of the scarier parts is at some point in the class everything like blends and then you leave the room and come back and its like BAH! [HANDS PULLING AIR TO HER FACE, LAUGHING]
D: [LAUGHS] Yeah we experience this.
K: You get used to it.
MH: Two more questions dating and discipline. I know you guys have to get to class. Dating. How does it work? There are a lot of attractive, fit, interesting, single people in the class from all aspects of society - straight, LGBT. Is it frowned upon or is it cool? Would dating and breakups cause people to leave the class and thus be frowned upon?
F: No it is not frowned upon. There are lots of capoeiristas who get together are married, live happily and open groups together. Love is blind it doesn't really matter. As for sexual orientation it's never been an issue. We've had people of all different orientations.
D: I don't think it's frowned upon if you are dating someone it comes back to the energy you bring in. It's your responsibility, if things are off in the relationship to not bring that into the space. We've all seen the sides of that coin.
K: It's pretty common but right, it's all out there. Nothing is secret, there are no boundaries. It's so emotional and you see peoples' interactions.
MH: Okay. Disicpline. How does it manifest itself?
F: Everyone has their own way. The first way that I saw was Mestre Cobra Mansa. He started his group as a mestre so there was a big difference between him and his students and he was also older than the majority of his students which made a difference. When our mestre left it became difficult because our leaders were our brothers and sisters. Our mestre's tactics were great. They were very subtle techniques that he used. He was not the kind of person that would praise you a lot, he always was gonna tell you what you did wrong. The way he got you to do things was to give you privileges when you did what you were supposed to do. The privilege to have the key to the space so that you could train when you wanted to. Or choosing you to teach the class because you would come and clean up the space. He would call you the "older student" and everyone wanted to get to this position. You wouldn't get to this position without doing a lot of work.
D: Because of our personal relationships it is very challenging and I have seen it play out in different ways.
K: It is self discipline at this point. [LAUGHS] We say if we are going to be late. We know you will be let into the class but it is about being respectful. In general we know and respect that stuff but it's not too hardcore.
MH: Anything you want to address or advocate for in conclusion.
D: We had a member of our group who has come back from teaching the youth in Palestine. In refugee camps. He brought back a lot of energy on some of the issues there. We as a group are not officially sponsoring but we are bringing awareness to the genocide that is happening. We are becoming more involved with movements of resistance. The one at the forefront of my mind is Gaza.
MH: Anyone else?
K: Deepa hit it right on the nail.
MH: Thanks you guys.
http://www.ficadc.org/
Editors note : Look for Capoeira in your city. The discussion here was based on Capoeira Angola. Mestre means master. Roda pronounced "Hoda" is the game played between two people.
Malandra: Female trickster.