Creative writing piece, introducing Capoeira to an English Professor.
You can hear us singing, chanting, and humming to the hypnotic Berimbau (stringed-musical instrument), clapping rhythmically to the drums. We circle in a ‘Roda’ around two silent dancers, cart-wheeling over each other, acrobatically kicking, spinning, head-butting: touching the dirt but not each other, constantly dodging, constantly teasing. This isn’t just a dance, its Capoeira; it's like human chess and a game of wit combined. Street hustling, Angolan style!
You feel the atmosphere as you live it, play it, and immerse yourself in it. Smell and taste the air of enjoyment, you ingest the drug, which isn’t a drug but is addictive nonetheless; the effect makes you forget about everything else. As the enjoyment runs through your body, it makes you train for hours on end, to perfect it, to change it.
I am told, this was the way the African-Brazilian slaves trained to fight for freedom: discreetly and artistically, all to taste freedom, which they eventually did.
