Join us at WorldBeat Center for a Batisado, Roda and Food.

Guest Mestres include Mestre Touro, Professor Jorge, Mestre Ephrain, Professor Albatross and Mestre Biquinho. San Diego's Mestre Preto Velho, Dennis Newsome.

Capoeira is a martial art integrated with dance, ritual, and gravity defying acrobatics. It is marked by deft, tricky movements often played on the ground or completely inverted. It is always played with music.  Capoeira balances the body, soul and mind. It is a graceful and exciting art form that teaches you to be alert. Capoeira is both a dance and a fight which asks you also engage your mind in learning its music, culture, history and knowledge.

Batizado literally means "baptism"; besides being an initiation rite for new students it is also a graduation ceremony for advanced students and a great capoeira community celebration with masters from near and far are invited and the fraternity of capoeira is measurably strengthened by the camaraderie and interplay.

These ceremonies are a great chance to see a variety of different capoeira styles, to watch mestres play, and to see  participants play and perform their best after much perseverance and preparation.

Capoeira is usually done inside a circle of people called a "roda", pronouced HO-DUH. The people in the circle are usually other capoeiristas waiting to "play", and observers.

A roda will usually commence with a ladainha (litany), often sung by the most senior member present. These songs may be improvised on the spot, but are often famous songs written by an earlier mestre and sung in Portuguese. After the ladainha has been sung, the same singer will usually sing the chulas, which are usually made up of any of the lines listed in the chulas section below but, again, may be improvised on the spot. The chorus repeats each line of the chula after it has been sung. Finally, corridos will be sung while the game is playing. In most rodas anyone can sing a corrido, though most often they will be sung by the members of the group playing instruments, the bateria.