Capoeira has come to Milwaukee

The first thing you notice is the music.

It echoes from down the hall – a sharp, rhythmic number, repeating the same notes and movements over and over, like dance music. The addictive melody is already sinking in, and causes the head to bob lightly.

At the door where the music is coming from, it’s more distinct now. You can make out the sounds of the respective instruments. One in particular hits you – a rich, sharp twang that rings in the ears. This sound is the fastest rhythmically; its voice gives the song movement, singing over a percussive chorus. Listening, one can make out the sounds of a tambourine, a scraper, and what might be a cowbell

I’ve done my research. I know what to expect. I know how important music is to the art form that is capoeira. Hearing the music in person, however, is very different from watching videos or reading stories. There’s a vital quality to it. Its simple, rhythmic composition has history and weight. It has a story.

Even though I know what capoeira is, it’s hard to put into words exactly what it is. Is it a dance? Is it a martial art? A simple answer would be that it’s a mixture of both. The art itself, unfortunately, is anything but simple.

This gathering is a special occasion for Steven Antonson. As a capoeirista, Antonson has been practicing since the late ‘90s. He has been instructing in Milwaukee since the early 2000s through his business, Milwaukee School of Capoeira. As of September 2014, he is an instructor in the UWM Department of Dance as well. This semester is the first in which capoeira classes have been offered to students for credit through the university. The class is small for now, but it offers a new movement experience for all involved.

“Capoeira was developed by enslaved Africans in Brazil,” says Antonson. “It was a way for them to practice their traditions in secret while creating a way to defend themselves. It was all these things rolled into one.”

Capoeira is the product of centuries of cultural practices and tradition, mixed, filtered, and distilled through a period of hardship and pain. It developed partly to fulfill a variety of needs that were otherwise denied its early practitioners: a need to express their culture and identity, a need to defend themselves, and a need to maintain a façade of helplessness.

The appeal of capoeira stretches beyond just UWM in the Milwaukee community. There are several active capoeira groups in the city, many of whom practice different versions of the discipline than others. Capoeira Nago, a group unaffiliated with the university, practices Capoeira Regional, a more aggressive and acrobatic take on the art than Capoeira Angola, which is Antonson’s expertise. Regardless of the approach, the attitude the practitioners carry with them remains the same.

As the door swings open, the music intensifies.

About eight people are standing in a circle at the center of the room, a large dance studio in Mitchell Hall. The hardwood floor is solid and smooth from hundreds of dancers’ feet pounding and sliding across it, and a series of 10-foot mirrors run the length of the north wall.

The people, capoeiristas in training, are arranged in a roda (Portuguese for “wheel”). Four of them are playing simple instruments. Two more are clapping along and singing. The final two are practicing.

A girl and a slightly older boy face each other in the center of the roda, with about a meter of space between them. Their knees are bent, their bodies low and ready. They almost appear to be swaying, stepping side to side along with the rhythm. They move slowly and deliberately, but they never stop. As one of them steps forward, the other steps back in response. Then the opposite occurs, then again, and again. Their eye contact never breaks.

“It’s a conversation,” says Antonson. “All of capoeira is a conversation between two dancers without using words. One person makes a statement, the other responds, and then vice versa.”

Antonson stands at the head of the roda. As the instructor and most experienced capoeirista, his voice rings out louder and more confidently than his pupils’. As he sings, he plucks the berimbau, or musical bow, a long flexible rod with a string stretched taut between the two ends. This instrument produced the sharp twang I heard from the hallway. The sound it produces is distinctly African, and could almost be confused for a human voice.

There is a moment of hesitation at the center of the roda, and then something new happens. One of the dancers, the girl, crouches low to the ground, extending her left leg out behind her. She turns around, raising her leg in a slow, sweeping kick. The boy extends his torso to the side in the same direction. Her leg passes over him, and she turns back around to face him. He continues his own movement as well. His upper body moves further toward the ground, until his hands make contact. His entire body proceeds into a slow cartwheel, moving around his opponent/dance partner until they have almost totally switched positions.

The dance continues.

“Capoeira offers a more complete dance experience for majors,” says Simone Ferro, a professor and head of the Dance Department. “We offer six levels of African dance and diaspora in the major, but I felt the program was missing something.”

Ferro was born in Brazil, capoeira’s country of origin. Though she was never a dedicated practitioner, her long career in dance and dance instruction has allowed her a distinct insight into the value of dance within specific cultures and regions of the world.

Her reasons, she says, for bringing capoeira to the UWM Dance Department are two-fold. First is its potential value to the Dance Department. “Any dance that’s unique to a certain group, that’s culturally rich, lets you understand that culture. It transports you to that place through movement. With capoeira, for an hour and a half you are in Bahia, Brazil, where capoeira was developed]. You learn more about why the people there danced, why they created that style.”

Her second reason was its value to campus culture. She notes the vast number of clubs and cultural groups active on campus and how freely they are able to express themselves. On a campus with active ethnic centers and clubs for students of color, dance groups, ethnic food clubs, and more, Ferro felt a practice like capoeira would have an excellent chance to find a foothold in the campus community and, in her words, “add to the diversity of the melting pot that is UWM.”

“Capoeira is about community,” Antonson stresses. “In the roda, everybody has a job to do, whether they’re dancing or not. They sing, they play. Nobody dances alone.”

Community is the glue that binds practitioners to the art. In Antonson’s class, when the roda is assembled and the dance is on, nobody is standing still. Everybody is moving to the rhythm of the berimbau or watching the conversation-in-motion play out before them. All of them are smiling.

“This shit changed my life,” says Daniel “Sapo” Rodriguez, a UWM student and eight-year practitioner. “I was a pretty depressed kid growing up. I discovered capoeira, I met people and continue to meet people who practice it. Now they’re like my family.”

Capoeira promotes familiarity and friendly competition between its practitioners. Dedicated capoeiristas identify it as a lifestyle as much as a practice. Antonson has made numerous trips to Brazil to study with the masters. Many of the capoeiristas of Capoeira Nago have traveled to compete with groups across the country and across the world.

What Antonson says of the art is true: Nobody dances alone.