Words barely inspire the thrill and experience of live capoeira. Here is the simple answer: “Capoeira is a Brazilian self-defense hidden in dance created by Africans who were enslaved in Brazil.” Rather than describe what capoeira is, I choose to share on what makes good, even great capoeira.

It was the fall of 1981 and I came to sign up for capoeira at the Mission Cultural Center in SF. Students were practicing movements and kicks on the ground that I later came to know as: Martelo de solos, queda de rims, meia lua de compassos. The mestre, Bira Almeida, Mestre Acordeon, and his students welcomed me to my first class. 

It was the fall of 1981 and I came to sign up for capoeira at the Mission Cultural Center in SF. Students were practicing movements and kicks on the ground that I later came to know as: Martelo de solos, queda de rims, meia lua de compassos. The mestre, Bira Almeida, Mestre Acordeon, and his students welcomed me to my first class. 

I am grateful for capoeira for cultivating positive thoughts, visions and energy, for teaching me about healing from the inside out, for innumerous real stories of people overcoming enormous obstacles and overwhelming odds to move, to flow, and to play inside the capoeira circle.