A group of 14 students and Professor Borracha (an old friend of Formado Gringo, Bantus Australia) from Capoeiracre Australia, made a trip to Brazil early this year to attend their grupo’s 1st International Batizado in Rio Branco. One of their stopovers was at the Bantus academy in Belo Horizonte.

Check out photos and the awesome videos of their trip at their site:

• Capoeiracre Australia - News
• Capoeiracre Australia - Images of Brazil 2005
• Capoeiracre Australia - Images of Brazil 2005, Belo Horizonte
• Capoeiracre Australia - Video Samplers

• Main course: Black pepper lamb, beefsteaks, vegetable kebabs, squid, chicken, green curry, salads, and sushi.
• Dessert: Chocolate mousse cake, Pavlova and chocolate brownies.
• Drinks: Coke, sprite, fruit juice and beer.

To those of you who missed the bbq yesterday, we wished you could’ve been there. The food was great and the company memorable. Despite the thunderstorm delaying us for a bit, we had a crazy time playing with charcoal fire, smoking shisha, eating burnt food and dunking ourselves into the pool.

Happy 1st Birthday Bantus Malaysia. Cheers!

Thank you all for showing up at all the recent public rodas! It was great to have you there and lending yourselves to the overall vibe for each one. Beginners who are new to capoeira and rodas may find the whole affair a bit of a daunting one—we understand this, and this article is aimed at addressing your roda FAQs. Seniors are encouraged to treat this as a reminder of sorts.

A lot of the following tips bank on you guys conditioning on the following traits in yourselves:

• Being alert at all times
• Being respectful, courteous and mindful of others
• Being enthusiastic

You’ll see what we mean as we progress down this article.

Contributing Axé Axé is the positive energy expressed by all roda participants through their clapping and singing. If this is done with much enthusiasm, the pool of axé grows, and the capoeiristas in the roda play with a lot more zeal and energy, making for a much more exciting game.

Try to learn the songs and sing along in the roda, so we won’t have to shout to make up for the lack of volume. (The effect is very similar to that of the Indonesian crowd cheering the home team during Thomas Cup finals, and axé could very well be the secret to the Brazilian dominance in football.)

Forming The Roda Always ensure that there are no gaps in the roda—the circle must be as tight as possible, but do be on the lookout for your those who are exiting the roda and need some space to fit into.

Be attentive to the drama within the roda and be ready to esquiva out of the way if you see a mortal or stray meia-lua heading in your general direction! After the action’s over, be quick to fix up the gaps in the roda again.

Entering The Roda Always enter the roda on either side of the bataria (the band). If you have to wait for your turn, always wait beside the bataria and not in front of them. Should you need to walk past the bataria to get to the other side, try to go around the roda or behind the bataria.

If you really must go in front of it, stay low as a mark of respect. Walking upright in front of a bataria is a blatant request to be whacked by a berimbau.

Playing in the Roda Bantus has a tradition where seniors look out for their junior students by playing with them, helping them develop their game and making them feel welcome in any roda. Patronizing other students in a roda is frowned upon, as it shows a lack of respect for an individual’s dignity.

You do not want to be on the receiving end of serious malandragem in the future when that person you put down turns out to be a great capoeirista. Play nice and avoid waking up with a knife on your back.

Buying the Game Look for a suitable moment to buy into a game. A game may be bought when:

• Either player looks tired out
• Either player seems to be unsure of his/her moves after a time
• You notice that the flow of the jogar is lost e.g. the players accidentally kick each other

DO NOT buy a game when someone’s in the middle of a rolé, low on the ground, or in the middle of a kick. You may cut into the game by staying low and protecting your face—but always buy the game purposefully. Buying into a game helps to keep energy levels up by substituting each other, so don’t wait too long before doing so!

Being Bought Out of a Game Return to the roda using the shortest route possible, without turning your back to the ongoing game so you can avoid stray kicks. The roda will make room for you to slot in.

Exit Rituals Bantus rodas generally don’t have entry or exit rituals. However, if you really have to do an exit ritual (e.g. going to the bataria and touching the berimbau, atabaque, scratching Candomblé sigils on the ground etc.) make it fast and don’t obstruct traffic. Again, be watchful of the ongoing jogar.

Play the Music Instruments Be brave and swap out the bataria players. The only way to get better at the atabaque, pandeiro and berimbau is to pluck up the courage to walk up to the bataria and offer to play any one of the instruments, being attentive to visual and verbal cues from the more experienced players. We’ve noticed that more people are beginning to do this—keep it up!

It would be great if more of you would come forward like this, as members of the bataria would be grateful for the chance to also play in the roda instead of being stuck with an instrument throughout the game.

Epilogue That’s basically it. What’s important here is for you to always use your wits! The roda is a very dynamic and lively place, with the possibility of a lot of things happening both in and outside it. Stepping into a roda makes you an integral part of it, and you must be aware of what goes on there and react accordingly. How good or bad a roda turns out to be is entirely dependent on each one of you.

So do take this in as much as possible. Beginners, if you find yourselves feeling overwhelmed don’t fret over it—just talk to any of the seniors who would be more than happy to guide you through these ins and outs a step at a time. We hope that this will help everyone improve on our future rodas!

• 1. You’re roda-addict. The week’s not complete if it didn’t include a roda.
• 2. You’ve done an au in your office/school/at home.
• 3. When you’re bored or stuck in traffic, you start playing the atabaque rhythms on any available surface.
• 4. You’ve done the air berimbau and stopped doing it when you realized how obscene it looked.
• 5. You know who Topogigio, Faustao and Nhonho are, and you’ve actually googled for their pics.
• 6. You check the Bantus website once a day.
• 7. You’ve mei-luaed public property. E.g. Fire hydrant, rubbish bin, traffic cones etc.
• 8. You clap and sing along whenever you hear music.
• 9. You are ‘protect-your-face’ all the time.
• 10. You sing in portuguese when you shower even if you don’t understand what the heck you’re singing.

Video of our first Annual Capoeira Festival held last year.

Temporarily unavailable

After the usual advanced class in the evening, some of us made our way to the Starbucks outlet at Sunway Pyramid to be a part of 8TV’s live programme called ‘Latte @ 8” (contrary to the show’s name, the broadcast was actually at midnight) where Bantus was the first of 2 parties featured in the programme that evening. The other was ‘Giler Battle’, a group of break-dancers.

We did a quick demo roda before the cameras, and then the focus was shifted to Quek and Rafael who were interviewed by host Jason Lo. Jason had done a little background research on capoeira beforehand, and so was able to ask questions to keep the interview flowing despite him not actually trying out capoeira before. Then Quek and Rafael came over to join us in the roda for another jogar which drew audible amazement from the audience, after which we gratefully retreated from the glare and heat of the bright lights.

We stayed a while to catch the breakers do their thing-they were all very talented as individuals, but unfortunately as a group they could have done better in terms of being in sync and connecting with each other. In any case, it was a good show of potential for the Malaysian break-dancing scene, which we all enjoyed too.

The next morning, a quick check on our site stats revealed that we had no less than 100 unique visitors to the Bantus website shortly after the show was aired. That’s publicity for you! Thank you to all who have shown interest in capoeira, and in our school as well. We look forward to welcoming more of you into our fold.