As the drum starts to beat, the scene is set in the basement of the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center. Seven students sit in a row with various Brazilian instruments. The mestre, or teacher, steps up, and begins a call. The students respond, singing a song in Portuguese praising the power of women.

Once the music starts to build momentum, two female dancers step out onto the floor. They begin moving their arms in wide circles, swaying back and forth as if challenging an opponent.

Suddenly, the drum resonates with a loud boom and the main singer shouts, and the dancers’ motions pick up. The two women fly over each other, legs high in the air and arms punching within inches of each other’s faces. There are calculated attacks and acrobatic escapes, as the two dancers continue to spar, until finally the drums wind down and they shake hands, pleased with the result of their game.

These highly choreographed movements are not a fight, nor a dance, but the “fight disguised as a dance” known as capoeira.

Capoeira, the Brazilian martial art that is rising in popularity among Americans, is practiced every Tuesday and Thursday night here in the spacious basement of the Trotter Multicultural Center. Students of various ages, races and agility levels gather to learn the wonders of this mysterious and energetic art from the grand mestre, Cabquinho Dantas.

FROM PLANTATIONS TO POLITICS

Capoeira has developed over a long and tumultuous history. Historians have traced its roots to the coastal regions of Central and West Africa, the areas most heavily affected by the Atlantic Slave Trade. It was here, in the kingdom of N’dongo, located in the present-day country of Angola, that capoeira-like movements were first used as a form of martial resistance to Portuguese slave traders.

At the onset of the slave trade, warriors under the regency of Nzinga, the female ruler of N’dongo in the early 1600s, used the ritual dance called N’gongo to combat invading slave traders. N’gongo, a fighting dance that mimics the kicking motion of fighting zebras, is said to be the source of many capoeira movements. Many of these warriors who fiercely resisted Portuguese slave traders were nonetheless captured, and transported to colonial Brazil.

Once these captive warriors arrived on colonial plantations, N’gongo gave birth to capoeira, which became an effort to escape slave bonds and regain freedom. Capoeira was practiced in secret on Brazilian plantations for over 400 years, where blacks masked their fighting practice by setting their aggressive movements to music and dance.

Many of these slave fighters were then able to use their capoeira to defeat and elude their masters. Ancient capoeira involved movements that allowed for the restrictions of chains, as participants threw themselves into handstands, kicking with their feet and often leveling their opponents with one swift kick.

After slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, capoeira continued to be prominent as a form of resistance. Over time, capoeira evolved into a social and political force. “In 19th century a capoeira was not a dance, but a group of men who fought together in the style now called capoeira,” said Latin American and Caribbean Studies Prof. Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof.

“These groups were important for the organization of politics because local bosses frequently employed them as bodyguards,” he explained, “But they also marked a kind of independence for some black Brazilians, because in the parts of Rio and Salvador that (the capoeiristas) controlled, they had more power than government officials.”

Hoffung-Garskof added that this political force was eventually stopped by elites in the Brazilian government.

“In Rio, capoeiras were pretty much wiped out by police toward the end of the 19th century. At the same time, the nation’s government began kicking poor, mostly African-descended, residents out of the center city. It would have been impossible to clear these neighborhoods, and push the residents into the slums outside the city, without first cracking down on the powerful capoieras,” he said.

CAPOEIRA IN BRAZIL TODAY

Since the 1950s, capoeira has been growing in significance, experiencing a revitalization in Brazilian culture as a more peaceful dance form, said Hoffnung-Garskof.