CDOB - Cordao de Ouro Capoeira Birmingham

GROUP HISTORY

Our Master, Mestre Suassuna was raised in Itabuna and started to practice capoeira in the beginning of the 1950s, against his will.Due to a physical handicap in his legs, the doctor recommended that he should involve himself in a sport that was not soccer. Under the influence of two friends that had begun capoeira and his medications, Mestre Suassuna started to practice this Brazilian art.

He states that in the beginning he had not liked capoeira at all because he had difficulty learning the ginga and its unique sway and he lacked rhythm to sing, but with time he started to enjoy the taste of capoeira so much that he began to take his training seriously and at this point his mother thought he was sick or ill.

When Mestre Suassuna started capoeira he did not fixate himself to a group, but rather, he learned to love capoeira as a whole, independent of whether it was Angola or Regional. He met people from the Academies of Mestre Bimba and Mestre Pastinha. He participated in presentations in Salvador, Brazil with Mestres Canjiquinha, Gato, Caicara … and all of this has served as an excellent base for developing his work and arriving to where he is today: international recognition.

Our group Cordão de Ouro, meaning ‘the belt of gold’, was established in 1967 in São Paulo, Brazil, by Mestre Suassuna and Mestre Brasilia.

It was a time of struggle as Capoeira was not well recognized outside the state of Bahia or Rio de Janerio. However, the group grew quickly with spectacular presentations of Capoeria by Mestre Suassuna and his friend and partner Mestre Brasilia, showing advanced techniques of game and fight.

Since then the group has grown from strength to strength, with it’s centre in Brazil and spreading to the rest of the world. There are now groups established in the USA, France, Germany, Israel, Sweden, Latvia, and several here in the United Kingdom (Nottingham, London, Manchester, Liverpool and now Birmingham).

Our master here in Birmingham is Mestre Papa-Leguas, who lived and worked for 10 years in Nottingham and is now the supervisor of our groups here in the u.k.

Jaime de Oliveira Gontijo: Mestre Papa-Léguas, was Born 19 June 1981 in Patos de Minas, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He started Capoeira at the tender age of 14 in Patos de Minas, where he was training under the monitoring of Contra-Mestre Chicote.

The first group he joined was Grupo Afro, but after two years his former teacher split from this group and they moved under the group Raizes - Cordão De Ouro of Mestre Ze Paulo in Belo Horizonte, Mina Gerais.

Formed as Instructor, and already teaching together with his former teacher, he decided in 2000 to move to London where, with the help of Professor Rilene and Rejane from the Group Amazonas Capoeira, he started to give his first classes in the UK.

Then he moved to Burton on Trent for 6 months where he taught Capoeira at the local college in the performing arts course. In 2001 he moved again, this time to Nottingham where he established his group, Cordão De Ouro Nottingham. His work started to grow and in 2004 he opened the first Cordão De Ouro Academy in the UK. Since then Cordão De Ouro Nottingham has continued to grow, to include classes in schools and universities.

In November 2008 he moved to Crete, to open up another branch of Cordão De Ouro in Heraklion, handing over the Nottingham group to two of his leading graduated students, Instructors Tatu and Tatanka. In June 2009 CDO Heraklion celebrated its first Batizado (grading event), with visiting masters and teachers from throughout Europe and the UK