Carolina Capoeira Club teaches the rules of dance and war

A club at UNC gives students access to martial arts. Moreover, joining this club lets students learn a bit of foreign language — and even how to play an instrument. This club is the Carolina Capoeira Club.

Senior Justin Marcellus, the treasurer of the Carolina Capoeira Club, said joining the club provides students with opportunities they wouldn’t experience otherwise.

“You can do things like you never thought of yourself as doing, you know, like, pushing your body to a limit you never imagined before,” he said. “But you’ll also, I guess like in a practical sense, be able to speak a little bit of Portuguese, but like very almost poetic Portuguese, because capoeira is tied to music.”

He said students can also gain experience with new instruments.

“So you’ll actually learn how to play instruments, too, like instruments specific to capoeira,” he said.

Marcellus said this is the first year the club has had committed members.

“So this is like the real first year we actually have like, you know, a group of people with the same mindset of trying to get the club to a point where it has longevity and you can actually do more stuff with it,” he said.

Junior Andrew Tillett, president of the club, said he appreciates the community capoeira provides.

“... You can go anywhere in the world and you’ll meet capoeiristas and they will bring you in and you can play with them,” he said. “So this is the really good international community that you’re a part of.”

Tillett said they have meetings on Tuesdays from 6 to 7 p.m. in the racquetball courts of the Student Recreation Center and Thursdays from 8 to 10 p.m. in the Woollen combat room. They also meet Saturdays from 12 to 2 p.m. in the Woollen combat room.

Quinn Hoffman, the instructor, said students practice movements and work on strength training during the meetings.

“Well there’s a mix of practicing movements, increasing strength and flexibility, learning how to interact with other people,” she said.

“There’s music and aspects to Portuguese, Brazilian language and so we warm up. We often practice some kicks and escapes and some movements that have lots of styles or beauty. And a lot of time we are also make sequences of movements and put them together in pairs. And then we will also actually use those movements in the capoeira roda, circle we play in, sometimes at the end of our classes.”

Hoffman said she loves working with the students and helping them learn capoeira.

“My favorite thing about the club is definitely the members, people who come and devote their energy to learning movements, that are really difficult, that really challenge them,” she said.

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