As capoeira erases the dichotomy between dance and martial art and its history unites stories of resistance and appropriation, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer has written across disciplinary divides to elucidate the history and meaning of this “battle dance” as a product of Central African, Yoruba, and “Catholic Portuguese” culture. She brings her concerns as a devotee to the art and a trained historian with an ethnographic eye to this inquiry into the art’s origins and practice. To accommodate the diverse and salient perspectives involved in this telling she weaves together two complementary narratives. In one she relies on a wide range of primary sources and historical studies to explain how capoeira was understood by outsiders or “strangers,” meaning nonpractitioners, whether from Brazil or Europe. In the other she explores what the art meant to its practitioners, the capoeiras, drawing extensively on ethnographies of Brazil and the regions that supplied its enslaved population....

You do not currently have access to this content.