Batizado

I’ve spent much of the last weekend playing capoeira at the Cordao De Ouro batizado in Nottingham. It was a great experience; it was inspiring to watch the Mestres play and it was great to get a chance to play with so many new people.

The event started on Friday night, continued most of the day Saturday, and then finished up on Sunday afternoon. During the grading on Saturday, I played against Mestre Poncianinho for my first capoeira belt. I never seem to play particularly well in those kind of situations, and he took me down fairly hard at one point.

It seemed like the batizado helped solidified the bonds of our local group and it was great to meet people in the other affiliated groups. It felt like a really welcoming community, coming together to sing and play the game of capoeira. The folks who knew what they were doing seemed quite supportive and encouraging to those just beginning.

There were Mestres and Contra-Mestres there from all over the world, including Brasil, Israel, Hungary, and England. The skill these people possess is incredible: an amazing combination of speed, strength, agility, and grace brought to the roda with fun, humour and a bit of trickery.

There were many great workshops over the course of the weekend. My favorite was by Mestre Jogo de Dentro, who focused on the details of a fairly simple sequence in the Angola style. There was also a samba workshop, which was a nice break from the capoeria and complimented the live samba band and capoeira demonstration at the Saturday night party.

It was a great weekend and I’m already looking forward to next year’s batizado!

Photos from the Nottingham Batizado flickr pool by jphastings.