Traditional capoeira street circles in Florianópolis (Southern Brazil): impacts of the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Capoeira is a cultural manifestation of Afro-Brazilian origin, born during the slavery period in Brazil. Its practice developed historically on the street, on the margins of Brazilian society, giving new meaning to spaces almost always understood only as places of passage or transition. Capoeira has manifested itself in traditional capoeira street circles in Florianópolis (Southern Brazil) for over 30 years, representing possibilities of playful and leisure moments for practitioners, resistant to established historical inequalities. With the covid-19 pandemic and indications for social distancing, the configurations of social life needed to be reinvented. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on traditional capoeira street circles in Florianópolis. This is a descriptive, exploratory field research with a qualitative approach to the data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants, whose contents were organised in NVivo-12 software and analysed using content analysis, considering the framework of leisure studies and Southern Epistemologies. This study confirmed the impossibility of carrying out the circles in person, resulting in difficulties faced by participants, with different reverberations in their lives. The research highlights the importance of turning to the manifestations and social actors made invisible throughout history, doubly disadvantaged during the current scenario.