Dance of Freedom – original artwork and story by @mariandavp

Last night my capoeira lesson didn’t go that well. I forgot to bring my pants with and though my mestre hates it when someone shows up unprepared, he still let me join the class wearing shorts.

In the beginning I was relieved by his lenience, but then my turn was up to get in the roda. Everyone was singing and clapping, my opponent did the ginga and my mestre was expecting me to show an armada - the round kick we had been practicing for a whole week. And had I been wearing my pants, I would have shown off a gracious move, but now my shorts were too loose; if I did do the armada everyone in the room would see my underwear.

Only at the thought of it, my leg got heavy. I didn’t manage to finish my attack. I couldn’t perform a decent defense either. My mestre got upset and asked me to leave the roda.

“If you don’t want to practice, at least sit aside and try to learn by watching others!”

I felt bitter. Of course, I didn’t want to flash my panties to others, but I did mind letting my teacher down. The next couple of practitioners went into the roda. I tried to participate by clapping my hands; I was out of the rhythm. I tried to observe them and learn as he said; my mind couldn’t escape the thought of my failure. One of classmates sat beside me.

“You are taking the whole thing too seriously” he whispered to my ear. He took a small plastic bag of energy candies out of his pocket. “Here, you want some?”

Unable to resist his sweet offer, I threw my greedy hand in the plastic bag trying to grab as many candies as I could while making an awful lot of noise.
My teacher despaired. He grabbed the bag from my hand and motioned us to be silent. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t want to interrupt his other students’ training, but you could see in his eyes how angry he was with us.

His wife, who was also his assistant, got up from the bench where she had been sitting all this time and walked towards us. She stood still in the middle of the room. Everyone stopped practicing and turned their attention to her. With her powerful voice she asked us:

“If you had to pay your teacher upfront for all the lessons you had to take in order to really learn capoeira, would you do it?”

“This would be practically impossible! It takes a lifetime to learn an art like this…” one of the students responded.

“We wouldn’t have enough money!” I added.

“How do you pay for your lessons now?” she asked me.

“Month by month and it still seems a lot compared to my salary!”

She smiled.

“I am not asking you to make this art your first priority, but I can’t imagine how it is possible to spend such an important part of your income and your free time to learn, and on the same time not pay attention to the lesson.

There is no way to condense the knowledge of a lifetime in a single lesson. Even if it were, you couldn’t afford the price.

You are offered the chance to receive knowledge gradually. You are offered the time to prepare yourselves for the next level. So focus on what you are being taught.”

She was right, but shouldn’t be the teacher the one to pass the message? Why was she talking on his behalf? As if she read my thought, she looked me in the eyes and said:

“When a student ignores the teacher, he disrespects him. The teacher feels his value is being undermined. Communication between them is no longer beneficial because their selfishness has made their relation competitive. I that to him am a companion and to you am an assistant; I can teach and be taught without being judged. I, who am not offended, can see clear that the only reason he exists as a teacher is because you chose to become his students. On the other hand, the only reason you are defined as students and he as a teacher is because he holds the knowledge you wish to obtain.

In this martial dance, one determines the value of the other. The more harmonic the relationship, the more effectively knowledge is cultivated and grows and becomes art.

And like all arts, this art as well is the weapon of a slave seeking freedom."

[Painting; acrylics on canvas. Story part of original greek novel Hippocampus published 2015 and translated for publication on Steemit]