Capoeira is an art form created by Brazilian slaves in the 16th century that incorporates martial arts, dance, and music, however, today Capoeira is mostly a communal dance activity. The purpose of Capoeira is not to hit, attack, or defeat your opponent, but rather follow the rhythm and maneuver them into a position where you can trap them. In our abstract and digital version of the ancient Brazilian game, the player follows lines created by another player, and tries to work their way around them. Our game is a group collaborative visual creative experience in which all players dynamically work to create a beautiful visual manifestation of the spirit of Capoeira. The game includes a lot of improvisation. The players are not able to think about their moves until the very last second. This spontaneity that the game requires is exactly what we wanted to highlight in our game. 

When Capoeira was first created, people didn't have the ability to create a digital version of the game. We want to recreate Capoeira so that you cannot see your opponent, but only the movements they make. By using the Kinect from Xbox as well as the programming software Processing, players' movement is traced and recorded on the screen by filling in an area to represent the space they occupy in accord with their color palette. Two opponents move simultaneously creating a beautiful visual. The objective of our version of Capoeira is to make it through a full song without intersecting limbs. However, players can intersect the shaded area that represents the space their opponent has occupied previously. Having the ability to digitalize Capoeira lets us explore many possibilities, but we thought that to make it as realistic as possible, we would actually take away one key component: a human opponent. However, many other focal points of Capoeira still remain. The music will be keeping a steadily increasing tempo, and the movements on the screen will simulate different Capoeira moves. The hope is that the two opponents will work off of each other's moves, and be emerged in this new experience of the old game.