Falling on Purpose: The Positive Imbalance

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Acrobatics are often dismissed as a refusal of combat, capoeira sliding into mere performance. The thesis argues the opposite: positive imbalance is agonistic, as much a marker of dominance as a kick.

A duel of reversals

The encounter becomes a duel of reversals and acrobatics. The capoeirista frees himself from death by flirting with it, producing aesthetic and spectacular actions, harder and finer to watch than the adversary's. Whoever performs the most perilous movements with mastery and release is consecrated the winner. It is an unformalised victory: the game does not stop, but each knows who showed the greater capacity for positive imbalance.

A hierarchy of movements

There is a hierarchical code among the movements: the salto alto is judged harder than the macaco, and the macaco more complex than the aú. Contrary to analyses that would read positive imbalance as a refusal of the game — a slide into a psychomotor performance — the acrobatics and balances are agonistic in the same way as kicks or sweeps. The game changes register; the markers of dominance change with it.

Why it matters

To seek one's own imbalance, to court the fall, is not to abandon the duel but to wage it in another currency. The acrobatic body is a fighting body.

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 positive imbalance as an agonistic register of the game).

IN THE CORPUS

→ Why the Risk of Falling Is the Point

→ In Capoeira, You Win by Almost Touching

→ The Free Game and the Coded Sequence

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. Falling on Purpose: The Positive Imbalance. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 63. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/falling-on-purpose-the-positive-imbalance. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.