Dancing Capoeira
‘roda’ for everyone

Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that mixes dance with combat, acrobatics with rhythm, and poetry with 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 in unusual ways, sometimes in dynamic group situations, at other times through partnering exercises. The foundation is playfulness; the most important thing is not what you are able to perform, but how to enjoy yourself the most within your own possibilities and capacities.

What is most special about Bruno's class is that it doesn’t focus on learning the correct steps and form, but is more about the very essence of Capoeira; improvising, playing, and sharpening our instinct, sensitivity, and awareness of our partners. To come to a state beyond thinking, where our own bodies can teach and surprise one another by reinventing transitions, movements, and connections that may have seemed impossible before.



Playing in the Extremes
Why we started dancing in the first place!

The workshop interweaves partnering, improvisation and floor technique with a deep research on the breath-work. Participants are given a chance to leave the thinking mind behind and dive into an immediate sensorial world. Through a conscious guidance and sense of humour, a space opens up where ideas of boundaries, limits, right and wrong seem to fade away. Almost like an aerobic meditation, one pushes into both extremes of strong physicality and utmost sensitivity – exploring and connecting all layers of perception and sensation. 

From a deep personal research drawing together elements from capoeira, qi-gong, contact improvisation, and contemporary dance, emerges an organic, energetic, and unique somatic approach. A strong connection to the natural spiral energies running through the body, and focus on integrating deep states of awareness give the chance to find a full bodied expression on all levels. Even though the work can be very intense, the sense of lightness is never lost - playfulness presence is a constant reminder and encouragement to never forget why we started dancing in the first place!


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.