The Continuous Flow: A Game That Never Stops

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The spectacular, flowing quality of capoeira is often blamed on tourism, a corruption of a purer fighting past. The thesis shows the continuous flow belongs to the internal logic since at least the early twentieth century.

From means to end

The continuous flow has been part of the internal logic of capoeira since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. If, at first, the aim was to touch the adversary with surprising movements, progressively the gestural form became an end in itself and consecrated capoeira as a spectacular game.

An old quarrel

The criticisms of the gymnastic movements performed in the rodas were already formulated in the early twentieth century. Mestre Bimba, for instance, judged the aú inefficient; in Rio, the capers of the Bahian capoeiristas were pointed at as so many dance-steps, foreign to the national wrestling. In the 1960s, journalists denounced the grip of tourism on the game. But the flow itself is older than the tourist stage it is blamed on.

Why it matters

The unbroken flow is not a modern corruption by spectacle. It is a constitutive element of the game, contested from within for a century — a feature, not a symptom.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Part III, on the continuous flow as a long-standing element of the internal logic).

IN THE CORPUS

→ Reading the Game from the Inside

→ Falling on Purpose: The Positive Imbalance

→ The Most Spectacular Capoeira Is the Most Criticised

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Continuous Flow: A Game That Never Stops. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 67. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-continuous-flow-a-game-that-never-stops. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.