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Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art now spreading over the rest of the world and this book, the only complete history of the art in the English language, traces the history of the martial art and examines its influence.
Barbara Browning combines a lyrical, personal narrative with incisive theoretical accounts of Brazilian dance cultures. While she brings ethnographic, historiographic, and musicological scholarship to bear on her subject, Browning writes as a dancer, fully engaged in the dance cultures of Brazil and of Brazilian exile communities in the U.S.
The function of dance in Latin/o American culture is the focus of the essays collected in Everynight Life. The contributors interpret how Latin/o culture expresses itself through dance, approaching the material from the varying perspectives of literary, cultural, dance, performance, queer, and feminist studies. Viewing dance as privileged sites of identity formation and cultural resistance in Latin/o America, Everynight Life translates the motion of bodies into speech, and the gestures of dance into a provocative socio-political grammar. This anthology looks at many modes of dance--including salsa, merengue, cumbia, rumba, mambo, tango, samba, and norteño--as models for the interplay of cul...
Nestor Capoeira, a long-time teacher of capoeira and noted mestre (master), begins this revised edition of his bestseller with an in-depth history of the Brazilian art, giving the most popular theories for the origins and purposes of this movement that combines the grace of dance with lethal self-defense techniques in a unique game-song structure. He discusses some of the most famous capoeristas and their influence on the art. In addition, he describes how the two major branches of capoeira (Angola and Regional) came about and the differences between them. The Little Capoeira Book’s clear descriptions of the game, or jogo, explain the actual application of capoeira, vaguely similar to spar...
Capoeira is simultaneously a dance, a fight, and a game. Created by the Africans brought to Brazil as slaves beginning in 1500, capoeira was forbidden by law but survived underground. When open practice was allowed in the 1930s it soon became very popular. Capoeira came to America around 1975, and has become widely recognized by dancers and martial artists. The author discusses capoeira's evolution from Brazilian street play into a way of life. The philosophy of capoeira, and the practical and spiritual benefits of this philosophy, are also discussed. Instructions and exercises in intermediate and advanced skills take up where the author's previous book left off. The book includes 100 black-and-white photos and illustrations.
In Capoeira, Mobility, and Tourism: Preserving an Afro-Brazilian Tradition in a Globalized World, Sergio González Varela examines the mobility of capoeira leaders and practitioners. He analyzes their motivations and spirituality as well as their ability to reconfigure social practices. Varela draws on tourism mobilities, multisited ethnography, global networks, heritage, and the anthropology of ritual and religion in order to stress the commitment, dedication, and value that international practitioners bring to capoeira. For more information, check out A Conversation with Sergio González Varela.
In The Ripple Effect: Gender and Race in Brazilian Culture and Literature, Barbosa adopts a comparative, multilayered, and interdisciplinary line of research to examine social values and cultural mores from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present. By analyzing the historical, cultural, religious, and interactive space of Brazil’s national identity, The Ripple Effect surveys expressive cultures and literary manifestations. It uses the martial art-dance-ritual capoeira as a lynchpin to disclose historical ambiguities and the negotiation of cultural and literary boundaries within the context of the ideological construct of a mestizo nation. The book also examines laws govern...