The Kick That Cyriaco Made Famous

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Techniques are treated as local property. The thesis traces one gesture — the handstand-and-kick — across danmyé and capoeira, evidence of the family's shared motor vocabulary.

One gesture, two shores

Among the disappeared danmyé techniques is a double kick balanced on the hands, similar to the one used in capoeira — the old rabo-de-arraia, popularised by Cyriaco. The structural and cultural proximity between the practices facilitated the indigenisation of certain techniques from one to the other.

Borrowing both ways

If capoeira acrobatics have entered today's danmyé, an old danmyé kick echoes a capoeira gesture made famous on the Rio sporting grounds. The similarities between the two are not coincidences but the visible surface of a shared ludo-motor structure.

Why it matters

A technique that appears in two 'separate' arts is a thread of the same cloth. Cyriaco's kick is not a Brazilian curiosity but a node in the family's shared vocabulary.

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 shared handstand-kick between danmyé and capoeira; the rabo-de-arraia popularised by Cyriaco).

IN THE CORPUS

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HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Kick That Cyriaco Made Famous. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 74. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-kick-that-cyriaco-made-famous. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.