by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
If you walk by the Duck Pond on Fridays at about 3 p.m., you might find the UNM Capoeira Club singing in Portuguese, playing Brazilian instruments, dancing and throwing backflips.
Club president Daniel Young, a junior, said capoeira at UNM is taking off.
"I've got to say that right now, the club is stronger than I've ever seen it before," he said. "I don't even see some academies in America as strong as this."
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Young started doing capoeira more than five years ago, when he was 15 years old and living in San Diego.
Capoeira is a martial art started by enslaved Africans in Brazil in the 1500s.
Participants take turns sparring in the middle of a circle, using sweeps, kicks and flips, all while staying near to the ground.
"When slaves were brought over to Brazil from Africa, they needed a martial art where people didn't know that they were actually fighting," club vice president Teresa Evans said. "So capoeira was a game designed to look like a dance and to play to music."
Evans has been practicing capoeira for two and a half years. She said the martial art introduced her to Brazilian culture.
"I didn't know anything about Brazilian culture before I started playing capoeira," she said. "Now it's kind of an obsession of mine. I learned a lot about slavery and how capoeira started and what the conditions are like in Brazil now. I'm even taking a Portuguese class this
semester."
Tristan Hoyer, a freshman from Taos, said he recently joined the club after seeing students
perform acrobatic feats.
"I was going to the wrestling room in Johnson Center and ran into the Capoeira Club," he said. "They did some tricks, and it really caught my eye."
Young said that while acrobatics are the most visible side of the sport, "capoeira, in a nutshell, is a dance, a martial art and a game - all at the same time."
The fight aspect involves kicking and defending. The dance facet is purely for show, and the game side involves trickery.
He said capoeira has influences from Afro-Brazilian religions and music that guide the movements of the game.
On Tuesday, the club had a special class taught by visiting professor Recruta from San Francisco.
Recruta, who's been practicing capoeira for more than 11 years, said his classes teach more than just the mechanics of each movement.
"I try to pass on the passion that I have for capoeira," he said. "I push all the students to discover things for themselves. I want to pass that to my students the way my mestre (master) passed it to me."
A few of the club regulars are advanced, but Young said they always work at each student's level to make sure they aren't moving too fast.
Young said that's probably why the club is so strong, and its future looks bright.
"We'll be starting performances every other week outside of the Duck Pond, having capoeira parties, bringing out capoeira mestres to teach classes and using school money to buy new instruments so we'll have some just for the club," he said. "Everything is just kind of coming together."
The UNM Capoeira Club meets on Tuesday and Thursday at 8:30 p.m. in the wrestling room of Johnson Center.
