Malicia

I have taken up capoeira (and not as my wife informs friends, caipirinha). Capoeira is difficult to describe, in fact, what follows below will be dogged by difficulties in exact description. The best summary is 'fight-dance-game'. It is a martial art 'played' to music - rhythmic songs accompanied by African instruments, particularly the single metal string 'berimbau'. The game, 'jogo', is played by pairs taking turns ('buying the game') in the centre of a circle of other players. Though there variants, Regional and Angola, both comprise kicks, escapes, turns and acrobatic flourishes. Each player reacts to the other in what appears a complex improvised dance but is in fact a fight largely (though not exclusively) without contact.

The origin of capoeira is Afro-Brazilian and it is deeply saturated by that culture and, though it has adapted itself to international transmission, it is perhaps truer to its origins than other martial arts are to theirs. Supposedly capoeira was a way for slaves to disguise the practice of fighting as playful dance. Certainly capoeira is coloured by a history of racial and quasi-colonial suppression that runs through to and beyond the period of martial law in Brazil. This is reflected in the nicknames into which capoeiristas (those who play capoeira) are 'baptised' (Bimba, Russo, Bombril, Perola and so on) originally intended to provide protective anonymity.

Because capoeira is an art of music, movement and the body, the experience of play is difficult to pin down in words. It is close to dance in this particular regard. You sort of have to do it. Obviously in my case, a very loose approximation indeed. Skill is determined by a complex composite of flexibility, dynamism, elegance, musicality and creative interaction with the other player. Easy to recognise, extremely difficult to reproduce. The fight, with winner and loser, is implicit, hidden in the many other layers, and can be only momentarily glimpsed.

Capoeira has a further dimension - 'malicia'. Straightforwardly translated as 'badness' or perhaps, marginally, but only marginally, better, as 'wickedness', it lies at the very heart of capoeira. It is essentially a combination of misdirection and trickery. It manifests, sort of, in feints, attempts at takedowns, trips, foot sweeps, movements of the hands, sudden kicks, barges and butts. Each is best if it is unexpected. There is a clear aesthetic around this in which wit is appreciated and particularly when the table is turned on the dominant player. It has been suggested that this reflects the legacy of slavery and oppression in which the strong is brought low by cunning.

There is a long tradition in the eastern martial arts of connecting their practice to action in the everyday world. Zen arts such as archery being the most obvious example. Capoeira, with its reactive and improvisational fluidity, fits well with science and research, better than zen 'being in the moment'. The core is the practised skill with which you confront a problem and fight-dance-play with it. The problem is partly your selected opponent and partly the product of the unfolding of the game. The immediate return comes in the exercise of your skill and the shape of the game. The pleasure is however, in the 'malicia', the tricks and turns, cuts and reversals with which a problem is simplified or circumvented and difficulties are diminished. Or, possibly I should have stuck with caipirinha.