ME. JELON VIEIRA

Mestre Jelon was one the very first to bring capoeira to the United States. Other than that, he seems to have said the following...

"Every august I have an encounter in Bahia. I bring so many different lecturers to the encounter, and I get criticized. This year I had someone speak about human rights. People say what does that have to do with Capoeira? Capoeira came out of the fight for human rights. People ask me what does steroids have to do with Capoeira? It’s a big problem right now.”

Taken from Planet Capoeira Magazine, "An Interview with Mestre Jelon Viera"
Posted in: Interviews | February 12th, 2001
http://www.planetcapoeira.com/comments.php?id=13_0_1_0_C

NESTOR CAPOEIRA

Nestor is one of the most prolific, unassuming, and lucid writers of capoeira - himself a mestre and part of its history. Read on...

"I stayed with Leopoldina only a couple of years and then in 1968 I went to Group Senzala. I was 22 Years old and stayed from ?68 until 1990. So really the biggest influence on my teaching method until ten or twelve years ago was the teaching method used in Senzala. That was an approach I built with my colleagues in Senzala, guys who are my age, and then the newer guys who came after and gave their contribution. Leopoldina?s method was completely different, it wasn’t as structured. His classes were a lot of fun. You developed a lot of creativity and improvisation. But the technical development was slower, what you would learn in three or four years, you would get in one year in a group using a methodology like we used in Senzala. But in those three or four years you have the creativity and a higher capacity to improvise.

These methods that we have created in these things, not only in what I call Regional/Senzala style, but also in the development of Angola. They (students) develop very quickly, but after three or four years they don’t improvise any more. In the beginning they improvise because they make mistakes! (laughter). So even in Angola they do this - “put your hand like this, your head like this, this movement we don’t use”, etc. (Modern) Angola has absorbed, or has been influenced, by this thing Bimba created.

What I have been trying to do since 1990, when I left Senzala because I wanted to try different things, but I left in a diplomatic way. Because I didn't want to use graduations, no more uniforms. I did not have that you oblige the pupils. I did not force obligations onto the pupils. I wanted to get rid of the idea of like "I belong to this group, or to this clan". I wanted to do something more cool, more relaxed. I don’t mean the training.

The training has to be strong. But the obligations to the group - I decided to drop that. I thought about how could I reintroduce elements of teaching that Leopoldinha used and which the Angola guys used through the 60’s. How can I reintroduce that method, keeping the elements you had when you learned capoeira from the street, like you learn to use a bicycle. Not the type you get in a structured class that you meet four times a week?.

So I started to think I had to create exercises of improvisation, for example, very simple things that sometimes people who are doing capoeira feel they are ashamed to do because they think it’s silly. For example, try just moving around one another standing up without giving blows, but without ginga or the clichés of moving. The same thing on the ground. You walk like a cat, moving around the person without using negative, role?very simple things like that. That worked very well because you develop a method different from what is going on. You need five or ten years to have pupils from that method and then you can see the result of what you have done. And the results are like my sons, Itapua and Bruno, who in my opinion they are not the best players in the world of course, but they are very good players. But they have this skill with improvisation. They can go to an Angola place like we did when we went to Joao Grandes academy recently. He played everyone there, and he has his own style, which is not Angola, but he adapts. Because his movements are more free.

I think I did a little step in that direction, which has worked. If my sons go to a place where people play hard, they play hard as well, no problem. I am not saying everybody should do this. I think all the tendencies of capoeira that exist nowadays, of the capoeira group as a clan, the thing with Angola stylist saying they are traditional, carrying on the real Traditions. I think all of these things need to exist because it keeps different possibilities for people who have different personalities to find there own space that is more close to their personalities. But for me, I found that after I was twenty-five I have now created my own particular space as well."

Taken from the Planet Capoeira Magazine, "Interview with Nestor Capoeira"
Posted in: Interviews | June 13th, 2002
http://www.planetcapoeira.com/more.php?id=14_0_1_0_M4