Dancing Capoeira
‘roda’ for everyone

Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that mixes dance and combat, rhythm and acrobatic, poetry and self expression. It is celebrated as a ritual activity in a circular area called "roda”. This workshop welcomes people of all types to take their very first steps in capoeira. In a friendly atmosphere everyone will be invited to interact and communicate with each other, sometimes in a dynamic group situation and other times as partner activities, through unusual ways. The foundation is playfulness, the most important point is not what you are able to perform but how to enjoy yourself best within your own possibilities and capacities.



Capoeira for Dancers
researching instincts and animal-like feelings

Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that mixes dance and combat, rhythm and acrobatic, poetry and self-expression. It is celebrated as a ritual activity in a circular area called "roda”. The classes welcome dancers from all backgrounds wanting to explore the relation between movement, space and partners. Bruno Caverna’s approach is deeply focused on instincts and spontaneous action-reaction patterns coming from more animal-like feelings rather than aesthetic choices. The dancers will find differences and confrontations along their process transforming into quite beneficial experiences, as they will provide a wider sense of a knowledge about yourself.



Playing in the Extremes
Life is characterized by opposites

Bruno Caverna has developed this energetic floor work with the objective to explore the polarities existing in every life situation. The basis is to establish an authentic relationship between breathing and movement. The participants are confronted with investigating which quality of movement and inner state of mind develops through a conflicted moment of breathing: inhaling and exhaling. This polarity could be considered an inherent existential condition present in all our life.
Caverna starts with an intense training combing techniques such as gliding on the floor, controlling the breath, turning and twisting, spiraling principles, techniques of headlong in a dynamic flow - to finally let go of them in order to concentrate on a mental and spiritual state, that triggers deep personal expression.
These are extremes due to the challenging fact that the physical and mental body captures an unusual floor work with unusual patterns of movement.



Bruno Caverna
Born in Rio de Janeiro and based in Europe since 2000, Bruno Caverna has always been fascinated by the fine art of movement. At the age of 10 he began practising Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art), which led him to work at a circus as an acrobat in 1993. The year after Bruno discovered contemporary dance, a significant turning point for realising that dance was the missing link, an opening for a world of endless possibilities. Over the past 18 years, Bruno has been moving through a thread of uncompromised dedication in the art of integrating his visions and expertise from various dance modalities and disciplines into a corporal language of his own. In 2003 the culmination of this integrative process was expressed through the rise of a refined floor technique strongly influenced by animal’s movement and woven with principles of water flow.

Next to that, Caverna has always been ready to reinvigorate the passion of his profession with an inevitable humane impulse to interact with people from all walks of life. This quality has propelled him to engage into eclectic projects of social flavours like: teaching dance at refugee camps, jails, psychiatric clinics, communities with disadvantages in the Amazon region, to mention a few.
Bruno has also taught workshops in collaboration with David Zambrano, Frey Faust, Rasmus Ölme and has choreographed for the "National Ballet of Norway" and "De Stilte" a Dutch Company specialised in performance pieces for children, and is constantly invited to teach his method in the major dance arenas of Europe and overseas.