Capoeira Topazio

Brazilian Martial Arts

Capoeira Topazio

Capoeira Topazio - History

The Topazio group was founded in 1987 by Raimundo dos Santos - Master Dinho. The group has been known for introducing new movements in the capoeira fight. The group was founded to keep together, by an only name, the Master Dinho´s trainees that were teaching capoeira in their comunities. It was a way to officialize what all of them felt: they were members of the same family. Since then the group has been branching out and increasing the number of trainees.There are branch schools in other cities in Brazil and in countries such as Argentina, Mexico, USA, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Turkey and Australia. There are no oficial numbers but the members are estimated in over 15,000.

Master Dinho has been working to continue Master Bimba´s project. On the 30ths, when the foreign martial arts came to Brazil, Master Bimba introduced new movements on the capoeira fight inaugurating the Luta Regional Baiana, nowadays known as capoeira Regional.

Master Dinho defends the evolution of capoeira without denying its roots. He says all martial arts have something to offer to each other and without prejudce or bias the capoeira can be influenced by other martial arts, to become more efficient.

One of the main characterists of capoeira is the variety of styles it can be practiced. Some people think this is a problem, but it gives each capoeira group its own identity. It doesn’t matter where is a Topazio capoeira player, he will be easily recognized as a member of Topazio Group because there is just one only style practiced by all members of the group.

It is our own Mestre Dinho that says: “capoeira always was and it will always be a fight“. The Topazio Group is comprised of highly studied techniques that were introduced by the Mestre, but at the same time conserving the roots of mother capoeira (case of Angola and Regional). The Mestre recently created a different technique and eventually other capoeiristas from other schools began to criticise. We refer ourselves to the union of capoeira with diverse movements in the hand-to-hand combat. And it is then when Mestre Dinho began to train in capoeira, he viewed other martial arts like: Taekwondo, Judo, Jiu-jitsu, Free Fight, Boxing, etc for knowledge, but always staying faithful to capoeira. Its objective is to learn the different techniques and what he found better in each one of them to give greater efficiency to his own technique within capoeira. With time, Dinho became one of the most famous and respected capoeiristas in Bahia.