I am sat in a dimly lit squash court on the outskirts of the People’s Republic of Derwent. Equipped with a fancy Nikon camera which far exceeds my photography credentials, I have come to watch a capoeira training session.
Considering this a “training session”, however, proved to be my first of many foolish preconceptions. Thoughts of rules and regulations, points and scoreboards, meant Club President William Hornett’s first few statements were scandalous to me.
“Capoeira is a very difficult thing to categorise and no simple description quite does it justice,” Hornett tells me.
“When we come up against one another in practice, the verb is ‘to play’. It’s not a fight, or a dance, but a game. What the rules are, who knows, but it’s an interaction with someone else in much the same way as a conversation”.
‘A game’, ‘an interaction’, ‘a conversation’… capoeira sounded like your conventional session of Never Have I Ever. Nevertheless, I was curious, and I was duly rewarded when the Club began ‘playing’.
On paper, capoeira is a Brazilian martial art originating from around the sixteenth-century, combining elements of dance, acrobatics and music. Certainly, all three are essential when playing. Even during the warm-ups, Brazilian music is played through a speaker, and players seem totally in tandem with the beat. Movements such as the ginga involve a rhythmic swinging back and forth from left to right, and the capoeira movement itself is effectively a cartwheel.
However, what struck me about capoeira is that none of those three elements dominate or encompass it. Whereas football is predominantly kicking, and tennis predominantly hitting, capoeira has no underlying attributes or characteristics. All of a sudden, I began understanding Garnett’s apathy towards recognising a fixed set of rules. To the men and women who created it, and those following in their footsteps, rules are needless and are unwanted restrictions, barriers to the freedom and flexibility at the basis of it all.
“It allows people to have clear and different styles,” Hornett explains, “playing with one person is never the same as playing with another”.
I was intrigued, and couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing or hearing. Here was a martial art in which identity-building, communication and camaraderie seemed to matter so much more than the varying physical movements employed. In fact, the latter appeared to act as the foundations for the former. I might as well have been writing for Scene, Art, or even Fashion. Certainly, I feel putting this article in the Sports section does not do capoeira justice.
Regardless, it’s definitely worth a go. As I shake Mr. Hornett’s hand, he informs me that sessions are 6-8pm on Wednesdays and 4-5pm on Sundays. If you’re in search of a physical and/or psychological activity which is truly unique from anything you’ve ever done in the student hotchpotch that is your life, then the wonderful world of capoeira is waiting for you. Oh, and they’re all held in the Derwent squash courts… which are nothing like Brazil.