Getting Help with Kicking Higher
Capoeira class yesterday was a real challenge. I’ve been going to capoeira on-and-off for a little over a year now. Maestre Mucuiú teaches at Arte Capoeira on east 28th St in Manhattan. Mucuiú is stout, cheerful and buff. He speaks mostly in Portuguese and sometimes in broken English to the packed beginners classes, calling out moves and leading demonstrations. Students can be beginners for years so the skill level varies widely in the class. I sought out capoeira classes after finding boxing to be boring and stiff. The idea of spending more time up-side down and incorporating dancerly spins into combat seemed like a good alternative to the brute force and upper body focus I found in boxing.
Yesterday, Mucuiú had us practicing hand-stand cartwheel kicks. I was relieved to see even the advanced-beginner students in solid yellow belts shake their heads in skepticism as an advance student in an orange and blue belt demonstrated the move. (My novice level belt is white.) The combination involved switching back and forth between low defensive postures and then springing up into the cartwheel kick, orienting around one’s head on the floor and bracing with one’s hands. If you’re confused reading that description, you can probably imagine my confusion at trying to decipher the demonstration and replicate it myself. Despite my confusion, I did my best with the maneuvers when it was my group’s turn, letting the rest of the class scrutinize my lack of coordination and skill.
Even though I couldn’t pull off the move, I was glad that fumbling before an audience didn’t afford me as much embarrassment as it might have a year ago. Design school has taught me to show what I can do and present my shortcomings openly in the interest of gaining insight from colleagues. Indeed, many students reached out to help me in the exercises at the end of class. One student in particular talk me and my friend Rachel through strategies for managing the joda, or circle, where pairs of students take turns playing capoeira as the rest of the students form a circle around them to sing and clap a rhythm. This is the culmination of every class and the core of capoeira practice. Maestre Mucuiú has been at this so long that maybe the difficult leaps for me as a beginner, like going from repeating combinations to improvising in the joda, escape him.
“Kick higher!” “…but how?” My more advanced classmates aren’t so removed form that “But how?” place that I’m in. By showing where I get stuck, they have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and I get a little help in correcting my mistakes. Mucuiú is awesome and I’m glad that I’ve stuck around long enough to realize that his jocky exterior and rigorous standards thinly veil his soft-hearted passion for teaching and investment in his students’ success. It’s going to take a while before I can pull off the head-stand cartwheel kick. Until my parallel pursuit of Portuguese has me understanding Mucuiú’s every word, I’m glad my classmates are there to help.
