2 September, 2004

Tonight I found a special place. The Espaco Crianca Esperanca (Space for Children's Hope) houses a capoeira school. I went in search of the capoeira as a possible place to study regional style, and found much more than I expected.

When I arrived at the building, I didn't know how to enter, so I asked a passerby. He said the elevators stop working at 6pm (it was 7pm), and led me to an unlit spiral stairway with no handrail. The paper I had said to go to the first floor, so I figured it couldn't be too bad, but it turns out those directions were from the _top_ of the hill. Luckily, after about six or so flights of pitch black stairs, a group of capoeirists came by with a flashlight. After that I was able to more easily follow them up the ~20 remaining flights.

By the time I got to the top, I was already winded and without the proper clothing or money on me, I decided to just watch the class, and come back the next week to actually join. The mestre, Sydney (pronounced Sidgeney) did not speak english, but spoke very clearly so that we could communicate in portuguese. I explained that I am here to dance, and he expressed his deep love of dancing and showed me around the rest of the school (it's huge). They have an elementary school, library with computers, ballet, boxing, other sports, and a dance school. We watched the youth dance company practicing a routine, and while it was pretty wild and unorganized (reminiscent of some of our dance rehearsals), they were highly entertaining. There was one section where three of the guys lined up together and did a hip thrust move across the stage- hilarious. I'd love to see the claremont boys pull that one off. If I ever get a chance to choreograph something, it's going in. Anyhow, I asked about classes and the instructor said I should definitely come (right after capoeira practices) and they would be free (he seemed to think this was obvious).

Apparently Crianca Esperanca is a nation wide organization funded by public donations. I asked about volunteering and Sydney told me to return the next day and talk to the administrators. He warned me that the kids from the favelas were unmanageable, but he said it in a very loving way that sounded positively proud. We'll have to see how that goes.

The only problem with my developing schedule is that everything happens in the evening. I think I'm going to have to budget more for taxis for the late night transportation.

3 September, 2004

I'm going to help teach an english class! For the first month of so I get to be an assistant, and after that I may be teaching on my own. Hope I'm up to this! *fingers crossed*

4 September, 2004

Must gush- last night was awesome. Plans to go out with Louisa, daughter of Milton's friend, fell through because she wasn't feeling well, but instead I went out with Roland (guy from North Carolina I met a week ago). First we went to a birthday party for a dance instructor in centro named Marcelo. Had a good time and met several nice people. Then one of them, Daniel, invited us to the after hours hangout of some of the best dancers in Rio (the danca de salao style). Little place tucked out of sight in Lapa. I have no idea how to get back to it, don't even know the name. They played mostly samba gafieira, which I haven't learned yet, so I spent the majority of the time watching in awe. But there was also a bit of salsa and swing for me to dance to. I really want to learn samba gafieira now (even more).

Probably more importantly, it turns out Daniel and his gorgeous wife Varina live in Laranjeiras just a couple of blocks from me. They are both extremely friendly, and Varina was once a samba passista, so she showed me some of her moves. Daniel explained that he learned english mostly by reading science fiction books, so we had a nice long chat about favorite authors on the way home. Very cool people.

4 September, 2004

Notes from Portela-
I'm now at the Feijoada da Velha Guarda da Portela, which translates roughly to a Party for the Old Guard of Portela. They have one every first Saturday of the month. Basically an excuse for lots of food and six or so hours of samba. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures.

At the end of the table is a charming mulato lady who reminds me strongly of my aunt Fay. Superficially she is about the same age, has dyed red hair, drawn on eyebrows, thin build, and similar facial expressions. In addition she seems to spend most of her time telling stories and making witty comments that keep everyone laughing. I like her already. :)

7 September, 2004

As of this past Saturday, I've now been to three different samba schools. The rehearsals take place in big open air warehouse type buildings with a prominent stage and decorations in the school's colors. Every school has a large bar that dishes out incredible amounts of cheap beer during your average five hour rehearsal. There are actually several styles of samba, including Carnaval's samba enredo which is danced without a partner, and samba gafieira, which is more like a ballroom style dance. Samba enredo involves vigorously shuffling your feet in a 1-2-3-pause rhythm. Women shake their hips and butts in the process, while men generally don't. You are supposed to hold your upper body relatively still, which I suspect may have originated in an effort to avoid spilling the requisite cup of beer while dancing. At any rate, people usually spend more time just stepping to the beat than actually dancing samba because no one has the stamina to keep dancing that fast for several minutes, much less several hours.

Milton had gone for the weekend, and so on Sunday Bruno had a party. Most of the attendees were his cousins in some form. I had a good time playing cards and making sure no one died of alcohol poisoning. They drink beer pretty exclusively, so I guess it is hard to injest too much alcohol too quickly without chugging it. One of the guys, Joao, decided to quiz me on american culture. It was very odd. He was terribly upset by the fact that I don't like N'synch or Britney Spears (he's a big fan), but also seemed to want to hold me personally responsible for the negative effects of american commercialism on brazilian economics. We got into a heated debate about who was responsible for the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol. He seemed shocked when I explained that most people don't even know what it is. While he was trying to figure out how americans could be so obscenely ignorant, I explained what the Kyoto Protocol is to the rest of the group, most of whom hadn't heard of it. I don't think Joao caught the irony. Anyhow, it was actually a lot of fun trying to hold a debate with a drunken guy who doesn't speak english. I definately had to stretch my portuguese skills, even with the help of a couple of translators.

I made plans with a couple of the girls to go out to a forro club, but by mid-afternoon on Monday I wasn't feeling so hot, so I called that off. It was a good thing too, because I came down with chills and a pretty bad fever. Took a hot shower to stop shivering and then baked for several hours. By morning my fever had broken (and hasn't come back), but I slept most of the day anyway. Now I've just got a cough and headache. Skipped my dance classes yesterday and capoeira today, but tomorrow I should be able to get back on track.

10 September, 2004

Yesterday was my first capoeira practice. However, instead of capoeira we played Maculele (sp?) which is a kind of afro-brazilian dance where everyone holds a pair of sticks and knocks them together, against another person's, or on the floor to the beat of a drum. The basic step is to pivot forward and back on your right foot while moving your hips in a vague circle. I'm sure it looks pretty cool with a big orchestrated group dancing together. It was technically much easier than capoeira, but exhausting, and my legs definitely hurt afterwards.

At about midnight I headed out to Ballroom- a club that plays forro on Thursdays. I've had several very confusing conversations with people where I tried to explain that I danced ballroom style in the US, and them thinking I meant I danced at Ballroom... Anyhow, I was meeting a guy named Eduardo there. I met him at a dance at Carlinhos de Jesus, and he's a rather good salsa dancer.

Forro seems to have several styles associated with it, and everyone has their favorite. The traditional style is danced exclusively hip to hip, and in Rio is danced mostly by older guys who come across as too sleazy for me to feel comfortable dancing with. Then there is what I think of as the "salsa" style- the movements strongly resemble salsa, mixed intermittently with segments of traditional forro. And finally we have what I have termed the "swing" style of forro. The movements are reasonably similar to the salsa style, but the attitude is that of american lindy dancers. Less focused on being sexy, more bouncy, and technically demanding. They even where the same clothes as most lindy dancers, down to the shoes (although nobody uses suede here).

Eduardo is very much a salsa style forro dancer, which is not surprising because he prefers salsa anyhow. After dancing with him for a while he had to leave because he had work in the morning. Shortly after he left, one of the swing style dancers invited me to dance, and took it upon himself to teach me how to do several of the steps that I had just been blindly following. He also explained to me that I had potential, but I shouldn't learn forro from Eduardo because he was doing it all wrong. I thought that was amusing. He's probably right though, I'd rather learn the swing style. Sexy can be reserved for zouke (slow version of the lambada that I need to learn).

What I really need is a group of dancers to go out with. I hadn't realized how necessary it is to have people to run interference or provide refuge when tired/uninterested in dancing with someone. And the value of gossip is not to be underrated. I don't really know how to tell the flashy from honestly good dancers in most of these new dances, and it would help to have someone to compare notes with.

Today I didn't do much. Went to the English class. So far I'm just sitting in the back observing. The class is entirely women, ranging from high school to middle age. Apparently attendance is rather poor, so it tends to be a different group of people in each class. Nick, the current teacher, is rather frustrated with the inability of the class to progress because of all the new students randomly appearing. I have a few suggestions based on Elwin's portuguese class that may help with that problem. During class I nearly went unconscious from boredom and cold (way too much AC).

This evening I went to a Gilbert Gil concert with Louisa, her boyfriend Leo, and his cousin Hugo (I finally learned all their names!). It was awesome. The guy has been performing for 30 years, so you have to expect that a sampling of some of his best music is going to be pretty good. In addition to some great samba and bossa nova, he included covers of "Imagine" by John Lenon, "Don't worry" and a couple other Bob Marley classics. It was a medium sized concert venue, and everyone was encouraged to dance and sing along, which made it even more fun.

The only problem was that I wore new shoes that I got for samba, and after a couple hours of dancing I developed a couple of painful blisters. The shoes are surprisingly comfortable considering the three or so inches of heel.

16 September, 2004

Well, I have begun my classes in earnest. Monday and Wednesday I have a samba class and then a "danca de salao" class, which is basically intermediate social dance with a completely different set of social dances than in the US (bolero, samba gafieira, and brazilian swing). Tuesdays and Thursdays I have two hours of capoeira each. They actually have capoeira class every day of the week except Saturday, but it is at the same time as the other dance classes, and Fridays and Sundays are a roda, which I'm not really good enough to participate in yet. I'll start going to those once I graduate from the beginners group in lessons.

Capoeira today was a lot of fun. My legs are super super sore. I learned several moves whose names I mostly remember, but have no idea how to spell. A couple of dodges, two front kicks and a roundhouse kick. Turns out knocking Rusty's hat off in high school was good practice, and I picked up the kicks rather fast. Capoeira seems to be mostly kicks until you suddenly graduate to break dancing status. I'm going to need to build up my arms if I want to do any of the handstands or cartwheels. Everything is done with bent arms, which means I also have to break my gymnastics habits of keeping everything straight and toes pointed. I'm starting to wish I had done capoeira at Mudd. This is the first time my body has felt so well worked out since gymnastics, and if feels great! (In a very painful sort of way.)

Samba class has been fun too. After two classes of getting down the basic rhythm, I realized that they were basically starting at the beginning in every class and got rather bored. Conveniently, the advanced class is in the same room, just over to the side (and with about a quarter the number of people), so I started watching them. Then I asked the instructor if I could just join the advanced class for the day and he said of course. That was a lot more fun and challenging. I think I was getting the movements almost as well as the rest of the group, but my problems were a little different. The first problem was that the step we learned had a pigeon toed part, and my turnout got in the way. Then I was moving my hips too much, doing a salsa style movement, and had to start stepping with a flat foot rather than pushing off my toe. That may not make sense to non-dancers, but basically my latin dance experience was messing up my samba style. I tried to watch other people to copy them, but everyone was doing something slightly different, so I got rather confused. When I tried to copy the teacher one of the other students told me to stop dancing like a man. They all wanted to help me get it right, but I ended up just being confused. Eh, I've got time yet. At least I could do the hip rolls better than anyone else. :-p

And now I think it is time for random observations that amused me:
-Two of the very few english phrases every brazilian seems to know are "hello my friend" and "no have problem." So brazilian, such bad grammar.
-"Ambulancia" was written in mirror image on the front of the ambulance. Very clever.
-It is confirmed that McDonalds has some of the best ice cream in Brazil, and currently unconfirmed that they also have the best fries. Hershey's has the best chocolate. Now we know why brazilians aren't as fat as americans, their junk food sucks.
-Yesterday's newspaper (Globo) had a front cover headline about British PM Tony Blair's new climate change proposal. Out of curiosity, did this even make the news in the US?
-While I was signing up for a portuguese class this morning (yes, I finally admitted I need help), the manager asked if I would like to teach an english class. I can't be employed under my visa and the watson, but I wonder if it would be kosher to barter english classes for portuguese lessons?
-The manager was a british lady whose accent I must have accidently copied, because she asked me where in England I was from.

26 September, 2004

I wrote this last weekend but didn't post until now, sorry!

Commentaries to share:
*I went to a churrasco, which is brazilian for extremely drunken bbq, on Saturday. Chugged a beer for the first and probably last time.
*I don't like drunken parties here any more than I like them elsewhere. Slightly drunken people can be entertaining, but very drunk people are just difficult.
*Salsa roeda is awfully fun. It was funny going to a gafieira (dance) and ranging from extremely uncomfortable trying to keep up with samba, to comfortable but not very good at bolero and brazilian swing, to very confident dancing salsa. I'm glad they dance salsa so I can at least prove that my ineptness with samba is because it is new, not because I just naturally trip over my feet all the time (though that may be true as well).
*The structure of the danca de salao class is interesting. They don't teach many steps, instead most of the class is spent just practicing dancing on your own. However, they have assistants for people to dance with that give individual suggestions. These include "colaboradors," "instructors," and "professors" in increasing level of dancing ability. They are all good dancers, but I think the colaboradors are still learning the opposite part, and instructors only teach on an individual level, while professors actually run the class. I haven't figured out how they get these positions, or how people get into the dance company for that matter. I have this vague (ok, rather strong) desire to try to join the dance company, but I'm probably not here long enough to be worth their effort to teach even if I was good enough.
*Milton apparently likes my cooking. I've been making up recipes for various things; yaki soba, apple torte, stuffed eggplant for example. They've all worked out surprisingly well. Today or tomorrow I plan to try a quiche recipe I can mostly decipher. I figure anything with a bunch of cheese, carmelized onions, and heavy cream can't turn out too badly. (I was wrong, it was way too rich and didn't have the right consistency for a quiche. Figures that the only thing I have a recipe for is the one that doesn't work.)
*Caffiene is addictive. Coffee is not served after about 8pm except in fancy restaurants. The combination of these two facts made me rather irritable the other day.
*Brazil has an unfair abundance of good fruits and juices. I need to take more advantage of this fact.