Ido Portal will come to Shanghai for a weekend workshop on March 26 and 27!! For a description of his workshops please click here.

The schedule for the workshops will be the following:
Saturday March 26

• 11:00am-13:00: equilibrium workshop
• 16:00 – 18:30: floreio workshop
• 18:30-19:15: capoeira roda (for capoeira students)

Sunday March 27

• 11:00am-13:00: equilibrium workshop
• 16:00 – 18:30: floreio workshop

Location:

Shanghai Ballet, 3^rd Floor. Hongqiao Lu n.1650, by Shuicheng Lu. 3 minutes walking from Shuicheng lu Station, Line 10. By Bus: n.925 or n.911

The price is the following:

• 180rmb for one session;
• 500rmb for 4 sessions

If you can attend the workshop please register online here!

Thank you!

For further information send an e-mail to capoeirashanghai@yahoo.com or contact Diego at 13761164307

Chinese / 中文

著名的技巧和卡波耶拉教练IDO PORTAL将会在3月26和27日在上海举办培训班！关于他的培训课程详细情况请点击。

特训课程的时间表：
3月26日星期六

• 11:00 – 13:00 平衡课程
• 16:00 – 18:30 floreio技巧课程
• 18:30 – 19:15 卡波耶拉  （限于卡波耶拉学生）

3月27日星期日

• 11:00 – 13:00 平衡课程
• 16:00 – 18:30 floreio技巧 课程

地址： 上海芭蕾舞团 地址：中国上海市虹桥路1650号 3层

请在这里报名

Click here to view the embedded video.

Contact Diego: capoeirashanghai@yahoo.com

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art form that mixes music, dance and gymnastics with its fighting components. Its beauty, fluidity and explosive gravity-defying movements have taken the world by storm. Capoeiristas can be found in movies, television ads, music concerts (Cantonese pop star Denise Ho hired Axe Capoeira’s Professor Berimbau to choreograph a Hong Kong show), and video games (Capoeira Mandinga’s founder, Mestre Marcelo, was the model for Tekken’s Eddie Gordo – one of the greatest video game characters of all time).

Mestre Marcelo Caverinha

In continuation with my last post, I will address some more aspects of stretching. This time I will talk about muscle isolation. I will apply this to both injury prevention and flexibility.

First, muscle isolation is a misnomer. I use this term to describe ways to stretch individual and groups of tendons, ligaments and muscles. Which one of these are you actually stretching at any one time? No one really knows. Still, I use this term for simplicity.

I will start with an example. Our camara Virtual talked to me about a sore muscle that had been bothering him for a while but he could not stretch it. Every time he tried to stretch, other muscle groups got in the way. These muscle groups would pull tight before he could pull the sore muscle tight. He asked me if I knew how he could stretch the muscle. I did not know. However, I did know how to stretch muscles close to it. I had him use a normal stretching technique that stretched muscles near his injury. By slightly adjusting the position of his body and relative positions of his torso and legs, he was able to pull the sore muscle tight and stretch it. In other words, he was able to isolate the sore muscle. This is what I mean by muscle isolation.

To be more specific, his injured muscle was on the outside of his hip, just above and in front of the ball and socket joint of his hip.

When he tried to stretch is gluteus muscles (butt muscles) the stretch did not reach his injured muscle. This stretch is done by placing the outside of one ankle of one leg on the top of the other leg’s knee and pulling that knee towards your chest. This was ineffective at stretching Virtual’s sore muscle. By pushing the other knee away from his chest and turning his torso towards the stretched muscle group, he was able to stretch the sore muscle instead of the gluteus groups. (Don’t try this if you are reading this at your office now, especially if you are wearing a skirt.)

I went through this same process with a shoulder injury last year. It was just a matter of finding how to stretch those muscles and then stretching them routinely. One behavior that helped was doing this stretch after exercising the injured muscle group. The increased blood flow caused the muscles to be more tight and supplied oxygen and nutrients to the injured area.

This relates to stretching for flexibility quite well. Most people want to kick higher or be more flexible with their legs. The mistake most people make is that they try to gain lateral flexibility by just spreading their legs as wide as they can and pushing hard. This technique is mildly effective. This is because lateral leg flexibility requires that you stretch a lot of muscle groups all at once. Though it may hurt, you are pulling on too many groups to be really effective.

The best way to increase lateral leg flexibility is to isolate the tightest muscles and just stretch them. You basically stretch each muscle one by one by only stretching the most tight one. This is sort of like divide and conquer.

Rather than just spreading your legs to the sides and trying to drop to the floor, you should just spread your legs moderately wide. Before you feel any tension, just change the angle and direction of your pelvic bone. You can bend one knee slightly to get a better angle and pull one groin muscle tight. Once you have stretched this muscle, you can switch to another one. Just remember to stretch evenly.

Another tip I have is what I call isometric stretching. Interestingly enough, the Merriam Webster American English Dictionary provides one
of the following definitions: of, relating to, involving, or being muscular contraction (as in isometrics) against resistance, without significant shortening of muscle fibers, and with marked increase in muscle tone.
Rather than increasing muscle tone, isometric stretching involves muscular contraction to increase flexibility. Basically, once you isolate a muscle, flex (contract) that muscle for a better stretch.

It hurts a little more but it is a really good stretch. I suggest that once you isolate a muscle and stretch it, that you contract that muscle for ten or more seconds. When you release it, it will be more flexible and you will need to pull it more taught by shifting your body’s position. I recommend repeating this process three or four times to achieve a maximum stretch before moving on to another muscle group.

I hope this was clear enough. Please post comments and I will try to respond to your questions.

Lagartixa

Mae Jaciara prepares typical Candomblé meal

Jaciara Ribeiro dos Santos symbolises the counterattack launched by practitioners of Candomblé and other African-based religions, which have survived centuries of repression only to confront a new wave of attacks by fundamentalist Protestant churches.

Jaciara’s mother, Gildasia dos Santos, was better known as Mae Gilda (Mother Gilda) in her role as a “ialorixá” or Candomblé priestess. She lived in Salvador, capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, home to the country’s largest population of African descendants.

In September 1999, Mae Gilda saw her photograph printed in the Folha Universal, a daily newspaper published by the “neo-Pentecostal” Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, under a headline accusing her of being a “charlatan” and of endangering the “lives and wallets” of her followers.

Jaciara is convinced that her mother’s death by a heart attack several months later, at the age of 65, was a direct result of the psychological trauma caused by the slanderous attack.

The case drew widespread publicity, and January 21, the date of Mae Gilda’s death, was designated as the National Day Against Religious Intolerance, through a presidential decree adopted two years ago.

This year the date will be marked with a “march for peace” in the Salvador neighbourhood of Itapuã, where Mae Gilda lived. The march is being organised by Jaciara, now 42 and a ialorixá in her own right.

As well as a call for respect for Afro-Brazilian religions, the event will also be a celebration of the legal victory against the Universal Church: after a nine-year court battle, the church and its newspaper have been forced to issue a retraction and to pay Mae Gilda’s family 145,250 reais (63,000 dollars) as compensation for moral damages.

For Jaciara, the legal victory represents “historic reparation for the Candomblé people.” While the monetary amount of the compensation is relatively small, given the considerable economic clout of the Universal Church, which has its own television network, the public retraction it has been forced to make will have a major impact nationwide.

Moreover, the process as a whole has marked a “watershed” for Candomblé, she told IPS, given its role in mobilising Afro-Brazilian religions to strengthen and expand, while fighting for the freedom of worship guaranteed in the country’s constitution.

Practitioners can no longer remain “closed up in their temples, but must take to the streets” to engage with the public at large and play an active role in politics, “the only means to obtain favourable laws,” she said.

“Candomblé will be in danger of extinction if we do not act on the political, economic and cultural fronts,” she declared.

For instance, Candomblé has been officially recognised as a religion since 1969, which means that places of worship should be exempt from taxes. But because many of the ialorixás or babalorixás (male priests) who run them do not possess title deeds, particularly in the case of makeshift temples in extremely poor neighbourhoods, they are forced to pay municipal taxes, and in some cases, their temples are even torn down.

Jaciara also lamented the fact that many famous Brazilian musicians and carnival groups, especially those from Bahia, “drank from the source of Candomblé and made a lot of money because of it,” but have never lent their support to Afro-Brazilian religions or helped defend them from attack.

Marta do Rosario, or Mae Marta, the priestess of a temple in the same Salvador neighbourhood, has organised workshops to teach traditional embroidery techniques and Afro-Brazilian dance. The participants have included members of evangelical Protestant churches who formerly feared the temple as “the home of the devil.”

She is aided in her community outreach work by her son Cesar do Rosario, who is a master of capoeira, a blend of dance and martial arts developed by African slaves in Brazil and now known throughout the world.

Although Mae Marta, 60, says that “Candomblé and capoeira share the same roots and run in the blood” of Afro-Brazilians, she initially opposed her son’s decision to devote himself to capoeira at the age of 13. She considered it a waste of time, a pursuit with no future, and dragged him out of training sessions to study, “because Candomblé also needs doctors, lawyers and professors,” she told IPS.

Today Cesar has a capoiera field next to his mother’s temple, which he has christened Cativeiro (Captivity) to commemorate the oppression of his people “for reasons of social class, more than race.” Here he teaches capoeira to 65 poor boys and girls.

It is an activity which is “played with the mind, not the legs,” he says, stressing that it is crucial to encourage discipline and sound principles, since capoeira is potentially a weapon that could be used for criminal purposes.

The “magical power” of capoiera and associated musical genres like samba has earned it a presence in “90 percent of the schools in Salvador,” through regular classes or performances, he added.

The reaffirmation of the Candomblé religion has the support of the Koinonía Ecumenical Fellowship and Service Agency, a non-governmental organisation that offers legal assistance and promotes ties of solidarity among temples. It works with 150 of the estimated 3,000 temples in Salvador.

Koinonía also supports a Candomblé youth organisation called Obabyan, which means “power for the new” in the Yoruba language. The organisation is aimed at the renewal and future development of a religion that was forced to lead a very closed existence in order to survive the repression of the past, explained Augusto de Arruda, one of the group’s founders.

Currently studying to be a teacher, Arruda is originally from the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo and comes from a long line of Candomblé practitioners. He believes that religious intolerance is felt more strongly in Bahia because of the stronger local presence of Candomblé, reflected in the large number of people dressed in white on Fridays.

Fellow Obabyan member Ricardo de Andrade comes from a very different background, as a former member of the Universal Church. He came into contact with Candomblé though the Afro-Brazilian movement, and said he felt “betrayed” when he entered a temple for the first time and saw that it was nothing like what he was led to believe by the “lies” of his neo-Pentecostal pastors.

Arruda and Andrade have suffered insults on the streets, in schools and on buses because of the clothing and beads that identify them as practitioners of Candomblé, but they are committed to drawing other young people to the religion and promoting public policies for Afro-Brazilian and Candomblé youth.

In the 2000 census, only 11,959 inhabitants of Salvador, a mere 0.48 percent of the city’s total population, identified themselves as members of an African-based religion, such as Candomblé or Umbanda. This obviously gross underestimate can only be explained by prejudice and the fear of repercussions.

Eldon Araujo Lage, also known as Gigio, is one of the few white Brazilians in the local Candomblé hierarchy, and was forced to leave home at the age of 15 to escape the objections of his family and “follow his dreams.” Today, at the age of 49, he is a priest at a Candomblé temple in Beirú, a poor neighbourhood in Salvador that actually grew up around the temple itself.

When he was a teenager, Lage recounts, he dreamed three times about a house and a man. It was only after he had become involved in the religious and community life of the Beirú temple that he found out that the house in his dream was a former temple in the same spot, and the man was its founder. Nevertheless, he initially faced a certain degree of resistance here: “Candomblé is not for white people,” he was told.

A self-taught expert on the history of his religion, Lage says that Candomblé today has “a new vision, reaching out from the temple to the outside world.” That new vision also includes the “re-Africanisation” of the religion’s deities, which were formerly “disguised” with Christian names to avoid the repression of the state and the Catholic church.

A recently passed law which includes Afro-Brazilian history in the regular school curriculum could help strengthen the movement.

Meanwhile, although the relationship between Candomblé and the Catholic Church has developed into one of “peaceful coexistence” with a few minor frictions, “the neo-Pentecostals have come armed for war,” with attacks and threats of invasion, Lage told IPS.

Despite ongoing tensions, Lage said that a health fair organised by the temple in 2006 helped to dampen hostilities, because “they saw that we don’t have devils with horns and tails, like they thought,” he joked.

Moreover, he believes that the situation has created new opportunities and posed a challenge for the reaffirmation of the religion through the weeding out of “charlatans” and greater dissemination of knowledge of Candomblé, aided by the Internet. (END/2009)

By Mario Osava

The Capoeira was created in Bahia by African slaves as a way to defend themselves from abuse, a skill disguised as a pseudo-dance ritual to fool their masters.

Today there are Capoeira schools all over Brazil and the world, but especially in Bahia, where slaves were first brought to America, as a way of expressing black pride and keeping their history and culture alive.

Lucia Newman reports.

1954, Roda of Capoeira, one of the oldest film about Capoeira, with the participation Traíra, Curió, Nagé, Waldemar, Caiçara, Crispim, Bugalho and Mestre Bimba.

Uploader’s comment:

This for me is one of the most emotional feeling I ever felt! Enjoy it, Capoeira Lovers!

Capoeira is for men, women and children; the only ones who don’t learn it are those are those who don’t wish to.

– Mestre Pastinha

Eu sou discipulo que aprende, [I am a student that learns,]
E mestre que da licao. [And a master who teaches.]

– Old capoeira song

The flame of this beautiful art is now in your hands. You can dampen it, you can burn yourself or your brothers and sisters, or, afraid of its heat, you can let go of it. I hope that you take good care of your capoeira and kindle this fire alive and powerful, enlightening your life.

– Mestre Accordeon

We need to be in the actual life, the real life, because capoeira is fundamentally about the roda of life.

– Mestre Gato

My message is that they have to embrace capoeira with all their hearts because capoeira has a lot to offer to the people who dedicate themselves. The more you devote to capoeira, the more capoeira will return to you.

– Mestre Paulo

A good capoeirista of course likes everything of capoeira: the beats, the berimbau, the game; everything else is secondary. Today a lot of capoeiristas are very arrogant, vain and these are negative aspects. A good capoeirista is humble, polite and he knows that all the other capoeiristas are brothers and human beings.

– Mestre Suassuna

“Are we Angola or Regional ?”, a student once asked.
“The other kind,” said Marcelo, “We just play Capoeira.”

Tu tens problema em casa, nao vem resolver aqui..!
[If you have a problem at home, don't come here (to the roda) to solve it..!]

– Mestre Brasilia

Capoeira is everything the mouth eats.

– Mestre Pastinha

This is a last one…

– Guerreiro

The impossibility of one person completely capturing capoeira, yet its potential to be touched by anyone are part of the balance of power and beauty of this magical art.

– Mestre Accordeon

…To win your love I tried mandinga
Learning capoeira ginga
Till I swept you off your feet
And faster set your heart to beat…

– After Verdade: By Nelson Rufino & Carlinhos Santana

Capoeira is joy, it is good humor, it is not that competition business; it is spontaneity.

– Mestre Suassuna

Capoeira is a game, it is dance, it is fight, it is of war and it is of peace, it is of culture, of music, it is a portion of things.

– Mestre Suassuna

Stupid is the capoeirista who lets himself be grabbed; even more stupid is he who grabs.

– Mestre Bimba

Capoeira won’t solve my problems – but i like it!

– Dave “Trombada” Hampson (from “Hotter Than Teppanyaki” band)

Please use comment form below to add new quote!

Combo Niños revolves around four kids who can transform into animal-inspired superheroes. Serio turns into a jaguar, Paco becomes a bull, Pilar morphs into an iguana and Azul takes on the appearance of an eagle. Combining their magical skills with moves inspired by the Brazilian martial art Capoeira, they protect their beautiful, ancient city of Nova Nizza from the Divinos, mischievous, madcap immortals from another dimension.

There are more than twenty different Divinos, including Insecto Gigante, a tiny bug with a big personality and plan to have insects rule over humans, and El Gecko, an artist Divino who wants to use the entire city of Nova Nizza as his canvas. Jetix Europe holds the TV distribution, home video and consumer product rights for Combo Niños across Europe. Disney’s Buena Vista International Television will service television distribution of the series.

• Some artworks of Background by Fenolwenn
• Other artworks
• Black and white drawings to colour

Developed by: Twelve Interactive
Release Date: Q2 2009
Genre: Fighting

Sport and RPG elements have been combined with traditional fighting game mechanics to offer unrivalled realism and challenging brutal gameplay. Train until you sweat blood to increase skills such as endurance, speed, leg and arm strength. Then when you think you’re ready, take part in underground street fights for cold, hard cash. Become one with your character via the complex control system mapped to hundreds of real motion-captured Capoeira moves and strive to earn the right to call yourself the most powerful Capoeira fighter in the world!

Key Features:

• 12 distinct Fighters with 10 customizable fighting skills
• Compete within famous and authentically reproduced cities from around the World
• Fight, win money, and buy training sessions to increase your skills
• Bet against other fighters on outlawed Street Fights or “Rodas”
• Realistic fights. KO your opponent with killer attacks!
• Multiple Game Modes: Tournament, Arcade, Quick Fight, Survival, and Training
• Hundreds of real motion-captured Capoeira moves

Platforms:

• PSP
• Nintendo DS
• wii
• PS2
• PC

Screenshots and Artwork

Videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

Credit:Mario Osava/IPS

SÃO LUIS, Brazil, Dec 17 (IPS) – They call it an orchestra, but this atypical all-percussion group is far from featuring the range of musicians found in a conventional ensemble. Which does not mean that the music they make is not rich and varied, as the young amateur musicians produce an amazing array of sounds.

The Marist congregation’s youth shelter Casa da Acolhida Olho d’Água has been running for less than three years. Its Percussion Orchestra is called to play at events, gatherings and parties throughout São Luis, the capital of the state of Maranhão, besides playing a key social role in poor communities.

The lack of experience of the orchestra’s members is more than compensated by the unique added value it creates by revitalising Afro-Brazilian rhythms and artistic expressions typical of Maranhão, a transition state located between the impoverished semi-arid northeast and the Amazon jungle region.

Seventy kids and teenagers participate in the orchestra of the Casa da Acolhida of the regional division of the Marist congregation, Provincia Marista. This Catholic organisation is devoted to the education and social advancement of young people, and is active in 78 countries around the world. The social unit in Olho D’Água, a poor neighbourhood of São Luis, is one of seven youth care centres run by the Marist brothers in Brazil.

Band members play a range of percussion instruments, including a variety of drums and tambourines, panderos, atabaques, agogós, reco-recos and many other instruments with peculiar names, in addition to the berimbau, the bow-shaped instrument that generally accompanies performances of capoeira, a martial arts dance form developed by African slaves in Brazil as a way to defend themselves.

Some of the members focus on one instrument, others play several, and those who show a true vocation are encouraged to further their musical education at a conservatory, Maria do Amparo Seibel told IPS. Seibel coordinates activities in the large facilities of the Casa da Acolhida, where rehearsals, meetings and classes take place.

Sonielson Pinheiro dos Santos, 15, is one of the teenagers who passed the conservatory selection and plans to study Spanish guitar. After two years at the Casa da Acolhida Olho D’Água, he is already a “monitor,” which means he teaches percussion to the newer members, and has been identified as one of the promising young talents.

Pinheiro dos Santos says that when he grows up he wants to be an “architect, a capoeira instructor and a percussionist.” He explains that he only joined the Casa da Acolhida group after much insistence from his mother, but that he now realises what a good opportunity it was for him. He tells IPS how it taught him to have better relationships with others, including his teachers, and how it helped him improve his grades at school.

But kids also come to the Casa da Acolhida Olho D’Água to learn and do many other things, like sing, dance, act, practice capoeira, draw, paint and sculpt. The Percussion Orchestra brings them all together and provides quality support to the other activities.

Last year it put on a show called “Singing and Story-Telling”, based on Maranhão folk tales, for which it won prizes at the state Children’s Theatre Festival.

The Marist project incorporates many of the “transformation-through-art” initiatives that are spreading throughout Brazil, but its core goal is more socially oriented, aimed at improving the quality of life, school performance and opportunities of children and teenagers in poor and low-income neighbourhoods.

The kids who are taken in are not forced to attend school regularly or deliver good grades, but they are guided in their school activities and supported in whatever difficulties they face. On weekdays they go to the Casa da Acolhida after school hours, and on weekends they can take tutoring classes if they need to.

As word of the benefits of this alternative learning experience spread, more and more families wanted their kids to be a part of it, and the centre was forced to make a selection, limiting the number of kids taken in to 70 and giving priority to the most vulnerable, Seibel says.

The city of São Luis has seen the worst escalation of youth gang-related violence in Brazil, with battles between rival groups leaving a high death toll. “Our work is aimed at prevention,” says Seibel, a social worker whose efforts have helped many poor communities from around Brazil, including different favelas (shantytowns) in Rio de Janeiro, where she spent eight years.

The centre’s teenagers all agree that what the Casa da Acolhida needs now is a swimming pool to make up for the few spaces for outdoor enjoyment that exist in the neighbourhood.

Besides the musical and artistic education it provides, the centre is helping these teenagers discover qualities and skills that they did not know they had in them. One example of this is Cristina dos Santos Ficente, 15, who admits that until she came to the Casa da Acolhida she was a hostile girl who often got into fights, and that here she has discovered her leadership qualities.

“We are the main characters of our own stories; we have a right to have a say in things, and a right not to be brushed aside,” she says.

Santos Ficente was elected to participate as a delegate in a Forum that discusses issues that affect children and teenagers. “I started seeing the world differently,” she says.

The new knowledge and skills these kids acquire and the opportunities that open up for them stimulate teenagers like Gustavo de Souza, 16, who has discovered an interest in the music, legends and traditions that inspire the shows put on by the Casa de Acogida.

One of the things he learned, for example, is that “Olho D’Água,” which is the name of the neighbourhood and literally means “Water Eye,” evokes the tears shed by a legendary indigenous girl who lost the man she loved.

There are some who excel in capoeira, like Vinicius Melo, 14, who sees in this combination of dance and sports a way to “defend yourself and respect others,” and an added skill to make dummy passes in football.

Or Maria Emanuela Lima, an articulate 13-year-old, who describes how “everything seems to dissolve into the background” when she plays the berimbau. The Casa da Acolhida is like a gift that “fell from the sky,” she says. (END/2008)

© IPS