It is both breath-taking and breath-giving.
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Physical activity and thinking about what you eat. Good.
Better that than wandering around a Walmart on a motorized cart.
Capoeira is a beautiful art, discipline, sport, martial form. I've practiced in New York, Germany, Japan, Northeast Coast of the States and it speaks to everyone. <3
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As a young anthropology student in Salvador da Bahia in 1974, I studied Capoeira Angola as one of the enduring—and evolving—African practices in contemporary Brazil. Dance, game, fight or art? It is all of these and more. I saw Capoeira practiced in ballet studios for upper class girls, in neighborhood schools, in street fights, in folklore festivals—all in the same week and one mile radius. What impressed me the most was the plasticity of the form. Born in violence and hidden from the law, Capoeria Angola evolved and adapted into all the flavors seen today. Capoeria as a sustainable farming lifestyle is a new one for me, but not so different from my American mestre who combines it with his Hindu and vegan spiritual practice.
Leave it to the crazy and creative humans to take a deadly form of hand to hand combat and turn it into a masterpiece of movement.
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beautiful, fascinating and elegant. Thank you for a beautiful story and the picture are simply delightful
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Capoeira may be a folk art, but it is not an Art. It lacks the esthetic requirements, the breadth of vocabulary, the artistic roots. It may be a martial art like Tai Chi, but that's it. Don't exaggerate its description or you weaken the perception of what art is. Art requires great esthetic values, technique and craft, all of which are subsumed to artistic expression. It is all the more important for a NY Times writer to maintain the distinction.
@Grittenhouse Do you consider dance to be art? I wonder if you're making the argument on Capoeira's artistic merit based on familiarity or a more surface level judgement.
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@Grittenhouse Capoeira's vocabulary is made up of the players' movements, which are varied, inventive, and full of expression; and of the accompanying songs, which are rich with emotion, meaning, and improvisation; and of the instrumental music, which sometimes dictates and sometimes responds to the game being played. It's obvious from your comment that you have only superficial familiarity with capoeira. Anyone who has studied it understands the depth and breadth of artistic expression involved. Capoeira is not just a martial art. It's a dance, it's a conversation, it's an art form, and it's life itself.
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@Grittenhouse video games are art. checkmate.
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Loved this sweet piece. Thank you!
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