ABADA Capoeira Cultural Arts Center

ABADÁ-Capoeira

Philosophy: ABADÁ-Capoeira believes in using capoeira as an effective vehicle for promoting social change and integration and stimulating individual growth. ACSF uses the instruction and performance of capoeira to transcend socio-economic barriers between communities and encourage community empowerment. ACSF helps meet the community's need for safe, accessible space for participants of all ages and abilities to participate in meaningful activities that engage body, heart, and mind, and serves as a valuable cultural resource. The organization promotes individual and community values of respect, cooperation, and freedom.

Values: ABADÁ-Capoeira promotes the following individual and community values.

Respect: Maintain respect for ourselves, each other, our ever-evolving capoeira community, the studio we share, and the art that we practice together.

Freedom: Create a safe space to express ourselves as the unique individuals we are.

Equality: Acknowledge everyone's contribution as valuable. Never underestimate anyone – especially yourself.

Integrity: Be fair, impartial, and true to our word. Admit when we are wrong and strive to make it right.

Leadership: Serve as positive role models, both inside the studio while training and outside of the studio as community representatives of ABADÁ. Offer help when we can give it and ask for help when we need it. Hold ourselves and each other accountable for our actions.

Community: Share experiences – both hard and easy, joyous and frustrating. Foster a sense of belonging, camaraderie, and wonder. Meet new people and have fun!

Education: Seek to understand and honour our rich traditions.

Strength: Build strong minds, bodies, and souls. Push our limits and approach challenges as opportunities for growth, remembering that failure is essential for success.

ABADÁ's teaching methodology is both challenging and supportive, rooted in the belief that encouragement and positive role modelling enable capoeira to enrich the lives of all students, regardless of level or background. ACSF provides all students with leadership skills and tools to develop into competent professionals.

ABADÁ-Capoeira San Francisco shares name and philosophy with the international organization of 40,000 members, which was founded in 1988 by Mestre Camisa, and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The letters ABADÁ-Capoeira, translated into English, stand for the Brazilian Association for the Support and Development of the Art of Capoeira.

Mestre Camisa developed his own philosophy and methodology for teaching capoeira by following the innovative concepts of his teacher, the great Master of Capoeira Regional, Mestre Bimba. Mestre Camisa's vision for ABADÁ-Capoeira has been to create an organization that strives to move forward by keeping one foot in the past and one foot in the future, maintaining tradition while adapting to society's changes. The organization strives to improve and promote capoeira— allowing it to reach its full potential as an internationally respected art, while maintaining its dignity, character, history, and traditions.

The organization is driven by the life-long commitments of Mestre Camisa, his brother Grão Mestre Camisa Roxa, and the eleven highest-ranked ABADÁ-Capoeira artists who have achieved the level of "Mestre" or "Mestrando/a." Today, ABADÁ-Capoeira is the largest and most successful capoeira organization in the world and is represented throughout Brazil and in 19 countries— Angola, Israel, Japan, Tahiti, Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Mexico, and the USA.

ABADÁ-Capoeira prides itself on the originality and constant refinement of its style of capoeira, renown for efficiency, aesthetics, and cultural and historical relevance. The original style of ABADÁ-Capoeira seeks to incorporate both Capoeira Regional and Capoeira Angola, and embraces the modernizing innovations of the legendary Mestre Bimba without losing sight of the history and philosophy of the ancient art.

ABADÁ-Capoeira believes that the study of capoeira involves dedication to all the various aspects of the art, including the relentless pursuit of technical mastery of the physical elements of capoeira, constant evolution of the technique to improve efficiency and prevent injury, understanding of and reverence for capoeira's rich history, individual competency and knowledge of the music and instruments of capoeira, preservation and recovery of the instruments, rhythms, and games of capoeira, and participation in the larger capoeira community in Brazil and throughout the world.