ABOUT
Welcome to the Washington Capoeira Center, the umbrella that has grown from our original flagship academy, the Seattle Capoeira Center.
Thanks to our supporters and our not-for-profit wing, Capoeira Life, we are able to ensure access to our programs through scholarships as well as free capoeira events and educational activities.
We train the Capoeira Angola style from Grand Mestre Nô’s lineage. The roots of the Washington Capoeira Center stem from my master, Grande Mestre Nô’s, Capoeira Angola Palmares teachings in Seattle during the early 1990s. When I first started capoeira in ‘99, Contramestre (CM) Pererê was the leader of the Seattle Palmares group. He was my first teacher, and he introduced everyone in the area to Grande Mestre Nô. CM Pererê's first teacher was Mestre Elísio Pitta, the pioneer of Capoeira in Washington State and a student of Grande Mestre Waldemar da Liberdade. Our school is a fruit of their work.
Capoeira Angola has a diverse history from Bahia and many unique strategies have developed over the past century. We derive our lineage from the area of “Cidade Baixa” of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Our strategies and techniques have been passed down from generation to generation, from master to disciple. Our ancestral lineage can be traced through many great masters: my master, Grande Mestre Nô; his masters, Grande Mestres Zeca do Uruguai, Pirro, Cutica, and Nilton; and Grande Mestre Waldemar da Liberdade.
Capoeira is an African cultural art of resistance from Brasil. As you learn and develop respect for the customs, ancestors, and masters of capoeira, you will discover how what you put into capoeira will help you succeed in maximizing your own full potential.
- Mestre Mangangá (Mestre Syed)
See Mestre’s Autobiography for details of the school’s origin.
Mission
The mission is to maintain the tradition of our Capoeira Angola to cultivate generations of students, capoeira artist instructors, and future masters who will pass on the legacy. Our programs are dedicated to the cultivation and preservation of Grand Mestre Nô’s Capoeira Angola lineage in the State of Washington. Through a combination of traditional and modern movement pedagogies, we aim to motivate our vibrant and unique community of diverse, mindful, and supportive practitioners.
Rooted in the lessons and values of capoeira, our curriculum is driven by 6 pillars: focus, discipline, respect, achievement, community, and leadership. Students train to develop body awareness, flexibility, physical strength, agility, mental confidence, and creativity; while learning history, language, musicality, culture, self-defense, social justice, and self- and community-empowerment.
All lessons lead to the capoeira roda, where we maintain the tradition by coming together as a community to live and carry on the capoeira of our lineage.
See Mestre’s Life & Mission for Youth Capoeira. (link to blog post in the new site)
Vision
The vision is to revolutionize and spread our capoeira to uplift the community. Since establishing as a school of Mestre Nô’s Capoeira Angola Palmares group in 2006, Mestre Syed had set out to build towards his unique vision. In 2017, the year his daughter, Aafiya, was born, Mestre transitioned the group to the Washington Capoeira Center umbrella school, still respecting Grande Mestre Nô as our grand master, while moving forward to mobilize the connecting quests of Mestre Syed’s vision: capoeira family and community (Capoeira Angola Mugunjê), capoeira training at satellite centers (the Capoeira Centers), and capoeira for social justice (Panteras dos Palmares).
