Kids' Capoeira Festival and Batizado Ceremony

Event:
A batizado, (literally “baptism”), is a traditional ceremony of initiation and growth for students of the powerful art of capoeira (see below). In a batizado, new students receive a capoeira nickname and play with a Master or instructor, symbolically welcoming them into the capoeira community. For continuing students, the batizado is a time of celebration and recognition of their growth in capoeira. Some new and continuing students will receive a cord that represents their level and growth. This is ACSF's second Kids' Capoeira Festival and Batizado since launching The RAY (Reaching All Youth) Project, a program offering free and reduced price capoeira classes, performance opportunities, youth leadership opportunities, artist training, and bi-annual health workshops to youth aged 5-19 from low income families. The program has grown steadily and ACSF is proud to announce that over half of the participants in the batizado ceremony will be RAY Project members. ACSF's acclaimed performance ensemble will open the batizado with a professional performance of capoeira and maculele.

Capoeira:
Capoeira (pronounced ka-poo-e-da) is an art form unique to Brazil that developed during Brazil's slavery era through shared African and Brazilian cultural customs, rituals, and fighting techniques. Slaves used capoeira to fight to escape and resist capture, concealing the combative purpose of the art they created with music, song, and dance. After the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, capoeira was illegal and its practitioners were socially ostracized for over forty years. The legendary capoeira Mestre, or Master, Mestre Bimba, rescued the art form and proved its legitimacy and cultural relevance, opening capoeira's first official school in Bahia, Brazil in 1932. True to its original purpose, Capoeira has developed into a means of empowerment and a forum for social and cultural exchange. It is now an internationally respected art of grace and strength that incorporates ritual, self-defense, acrobatics, and music into a rhythmic dialogue of body, mind, and spirit.

Tickets:
$10-$15 sliding scale, $5 for seniors & youth under 12. All tickets will be sold at the door.