Welcome back!

We are happy to start training again with the start of the school year at WWU! Our regular practices will start again on Monday Octobet 1st. We will always train on Mondays from 5:30 to 7:30 in the Fairhaven Commons Lounge at Fairhaven College, on the south side of the WWU campus. Practices are free and open to the public. Bring comfortable shoes and pants you feel comfortable moving in- and be prepared to be upside down! Also, mark Nov 4th on your calendar: the second annual FICA Northwest gathering will be held in Seattle!

a summer of capoeira

WWU is out of school, but some of us are still in town (with some coming and going) and we will continue to train, play music, and take capoeira road trips to seattle and vancouver.

email us at capoeirawwu[at]yahoo.com if you're interested in joining us, but be patient, as we might not check it so often.

vamos vadiar n'angola, n'angola vamos vadiar!

A Great Festival!

So many people who came to train and play with us... can you recognize them all?

 Molly (FICA - Bellingham) and Casimira (FICA PDX) share a nice game. Mestre Silvinho on Gunga, ContraMestre Andrea on Medio, Leika on Atabaque, and Wade (from the Lummi Youth Academy) on pandeiro!

An interview with Mestre Cobra Mansa

Mestre Cobra Mansa is the founder of FICA, and a great, wise elder. This is a great video with a little bit of his history, and his current project Kilombo Tenode.

3rd Afro-Brasilian Festival!

The third annual Afro-Brasilian Festival, organized by the WWU
capoeira club/Bellingham study group of the international capoeira
foundation will be held on Sunday June 3rd in WWU's Carver Gym.

Below is the schedule:

10am opening/ registration/ capoeira angola workshop with ContraMestre
Andrea from Oakland (from FICA: an amazing woman capoeirista)

11:15am to 12:15pm  brasilian dance with lisette austin

12:30 to 1:30pm  west-african dance with manimou camara

1:45 to 3pm capoeira angola workshop with contramestre andrea

3pm capoeira angola roda

at 4pm there will be a catered Brasilian dinner in VU 565.

The event is FREE for WWU students; $5 for the general public.

At Vaudevillingham

Here are some pictures of our brief participation at Vaudevillingham, the monthly fundraiser for the Bellingham Circus Guild.

Thank you to everyone who came: Shelly, Randy, Chris, Elli, Ethan, Matteo, Devin, Skya, Nick, Cedar, Sarah, Molly and Cory!

And thank you to the Circus Guild for putting on such an awesome and record-breaking event! (look it up...)

What is a roda?

I found and translated this from the website of FICA-Salvador:

Played in a circle, Capoeira Angola is infinitely varied with unlimited combinations of movements that involve legs, arms, head, feet in the air, a smile and a spark in the player’s eyes. The game is completed by humor, grace, agility, and seriousness.

It is in the roda that the ritualistic aspects of capoeira angola are most represented. In training, the intention is to prepare the student physically so that they may put things into practice in the roda. Therefore, practice consists of trying the movements and the attacks that are used in the game, progressively introducing more complex movements, whose execution requires specific abilities (such as acrobatic moves, for example). Students acquire this muscle memory through repetition, with the goal of attaining an increasingly smooth execution, in the measure in which the student develops strength and equilibrium. Even when it is accompanied by music and singing, training is different from the roda because the goal will not be met during practice.

Training, only training, is not enough to be a capoeirista. The most important moment in becoming a capoeirista is the roda, and so it is imperative that students participate in rodas, even if only as spectators, even though they may not know how to play, how to sing, how to play the instruments. In this sense, practice sessions, music sessions, or occasional theoretical discussions about aspects of capoeira represent the path that lead to the roda, which is the most important event in the daily existence of the group, and the necessary condition for the existence of capoeira.