Abstract
The Brazilian ethnic sports, capoeira is a martial art and dance form created by African slaves in Brazil. In recent years, it has come to be recognized internationally as a symbol of the society, history, and also multicultural society of Brazil. The purpose of this study was to clarify the material contents of capoeira classes for children and to consider the implications of the class structure and key concepts, on the basis of observation of capoeira classes for kindergarteners in Rio de Janeiro.
The results show that experience of varied kinds of movement was a valuable part of the classes with the potential to positively influence the children’s mental and physical growth. The term jogo, meaning “capoeira games,” distills the ethnoscientific worldview of capoeira for small children.
Further, it was revealed that it is important to “emphasize the meaning of the act” within the class structure. In other words, there is a sense that the act itself represents the perfect achievement of the technique. It was also seen that this kind of practice emphasizes the “question and response” than the completion of the actions.
Finally, this study indicated that the jogo concept is actually based on improvisation through semantic generation of “question and response.” In this sense, jogo is considered to be the original cultural essence of capoeira.
