How To Do Au Batido

Series Summary

Capoeira is the Brazilian martial art that evolved in the colonial period. There are two common styles of Capoeira known as “Angola” and “regional.” This type of fighting has a mixed origin, believed to have been created in Africa or in Brazil. A large group of competitors form a circle and take turns playing instruments, singing and sparring one-on-one in the center of the circle. The music that is integrated into Capoeira varies from slow to fast tempo and can be historic stories, silly songs, or songs of inspiration. The fighting styles of Capoeira do not focus on hurting the opponent, but rather the skill of your own fighting style. Capoeira competitors show movement but do not complete an attack to show their advanced level of skill.

In this series of fun and instructional videos, you can learn how to fight in the Capoeira style. Get an expert’s introduction to traditional Capoeira in this series of expert interviews. Watch our expert demonstrate the different instruments and moves that are associated with this type of fighting. See the various acrobatic moves and learn the names of each one. You will learn to defend yourself against another Capoeira attacker with various attacks, defense and combination moves demonstrated in these videos.

Video Transcript

"My name is instructor Sal Shito from Batuque. This is one behalf of Expert Village. The next thing we're going to do is Au Batido. Au means cartwheel, and au batido is more focused. So I can put one hand down and one leg is going to go over the top and try to hold it there. So it's more of s split, like this. Au batido. So there's two ways to do this movement. One is when you're actually playing berimbau, you're going to do more of like a snapping movement, where you come down and you're kicking someone. Or the other is when you're just posing for it. So with this movement, it's important, you get down on that one arm and the leg is going to come across the front and you're going to try get your legs to come down as you're up. You can also do both legs down."