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Great opportunity to let people see what's in Capoeira... the editor of my alma mater's online newsletter asked me to just say something about what my experience in it is.

Here is what I wrote:

Capoeira
Saturday, February 27, 2010

By: Gemilyn So '96

I first learned about Capoeira through a friend from college. At that time, I've been craving for any kind of martial art activity, coming from a background of the TaeKwonDo club back in ICA. I didn't start out on a whim. I just tried to find out more about the strange sounding martial art.  Capoeira (kap-we-rah) is a Brazilian Martial Art. Images of Blanka (from the arcade Street Fighter) and more recently Eddie Gordo (from the arcade Tekken) came into mind.

I next saw the art for myself in Greenbelt 5. There was a group of people in what I thought were in white pajamas, singing and playing a strange string instrument and a drum. They seemed to have their own world, and I thought it was some kind of cult in the middle of the mall!  They surrounded a pair of players like the Elementary game "Little Sunny Water". However, my college friend was there to tell me "This is Capoeira". I backed away and decided to forget about it, thinking of hippies deep in the 60's.

I saw Capoeira again in action at the Fete de la Musique event where they were showcasing Capoeira for World music. By this time I've known Capoeira from the scraps of youtube videos I secretly watched at work.  It was always being described as a Dance-like fight and that there were high flying gymnastics involved.  The kicks looked dangerous and it looked more acrobatic than anything. At the age of 28, I didn't know how to do a cartwheel so I wasn't too eager to break any bones.  And then I watched a rather hefty student get up in front and do cartwheels like a cheerleader, exchange kicks with his partner and so on. By that time my eyes had glazed over and I only had one thought: if HE can do it... so can I!

Suffice to say I got in touch with that old college friend and attended a few sessions. I discovered muscles I never knew existed. I can understand how people view it as a Dance-like martial art, since the purpose of the game is not to hit each other. It's better described as a conversation between two unique individuals. You're not out to get your partner to look bad, or to beat up your partner. In an almost spiritual or "pakiramdaman" way, you converse with movements and respond to each other by kicking and doing flips. The game and how to play it is not all you can learn from Capoeira though. Some people train in Capoeira to lose weight, gain flexibility, or even meet friends. Beyond the moves and the kicks of Capoeira, I gradually discovered how full and evolving this art is.  You can get people to learn about Karate, Arnis, Taekwondo, but never learn what else is there around the martial art. I've had since to "empty my cup" and refill it with new kicks, moves and philosophy.

The funnest part of training in Capoeira is the variety of what you can learn. You learn the movements of the martial art: your body becomes more flexible and stronger, sing your heart out, play different instruments, speak another language: Brazilian Portuguese (of course, the songs are in Portuguese), dance the Samba, all under the art of Capoeira.  The more I learned about one facet of Capoeira, it would lead me to want to know more about another aspect of it: the philosophy, the background, the history. Meeting people with like minds and hearts of Capoeira from different countries expanded by friend-base exponentially.
I think this is where Art is a physical movement, an individual expression unique to you.  More Art than Martial Art, I tell people. You get a lot more out of it than you think. I thought I would be learning cartwheels, but here I am continually learning about life.

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