Maybe a little provocation, just a little ;)

I lived as a capoeira instructor for few years. I gave up due some reasons, started to work as a webdeveloper and kept training and giving a classess but without pressure of all those problems when capoeira is your only business. I could sometime pay off the gym rent from my own money if those collected at capoeira was not enough, buy posters etc. It got me a lot more relaxed way of training.

But now I'm curious of your opinions - do you think that capoeira could really be a good, prosperous business? In which form?

- giving classes of traditional capoeira

- starting classess for children which I do not consider as a typical capoeira classess

- producing and selling (web?) capoeira gear

- giving fitness/combat/sport classes using your capoeira skills

- starting gym business, where capoeira would be your main but not only activity (find muay thai, bjj, yoga instructors)

- starting to blog about capoeira

- spreading capoeira as a new idea for life in orphanages, public schools, universities

- using capoeira in rehabilitation of injuries

- recording dvd's

any other ideas? anyone wan't to discuss it? how does it look in your country, how do you or your instructor manage to survive :) Why I think that someone could find it as a provocation? Because I know a lot of people that treat capoeira and everything with portuguese name as a holiness, something that you can just walk around, look, admire, learn just a little and that capoeira happen once and we should be thankful for it's existence and that's all.

I prefer to consider Capoeira as a great thing that happened in my life, but mainly it's a tool - to change mine and others life. I could use it. I can modify it a little to suit my own needs. Why not, it was changing all the time, it's keeps changing, why not to be inside of this development?

Someone could ask me about my previous posts in other topic, where I wrote about 'changes in capoeira'. I hope you see the difference, I do.

Would be great to discuss this topic.

Hey, heres my two cents for whatever they're worth. My first teacher very much treated capoeira as a business, as a consequence I think viewed the majority of their students as a means to an end, an that end was money and making them look good, to themselves and others. My current instructor is the opposite, genuinely gives a damn about all his students an treats money as a nessacery evil and has been known to run classes at a loss, which doesn't please his wife!There must be a happy medium somehow. But also I could be totally wrong here as I haven't been training very long an am far from the most blest capoeirista out there, however I suspect to truely make a living out of capoeira you have to appeal to the mainstream, if you do that something essential about capoeira would be lost. I know the recent discusion about the orishas said that the oldest orisha and all the concepts that go with him, ie wisdom etc etc presides over capoeira rodas. However a great part of capoeira is also in the malandro, Exu, the god of crossroads the trickster god, the wise guy.  That has no place in mainstream society, thats one for the edge people. The monty python an the holy grail the `you're all individuals' sketch covers it quiet well  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQqq3e03EBQ .

Anything that is a tool to change peoples lives is a vocation not a business, there is no profit in making people truely happy. If you did all the things on your list you could probably make a living, but you'd never be rich.

I would prefer more to discuss good models than 'is it good or not'. I'm sure about two things - capoeira and money needs responsibility - that's obvious I'm sure. But being a capoeira instructor is a normal job - so how to work, how to design your little "company" to be efficient in actual situation of capoeira? Lennon: good post though

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