The Group of Capoeira Nagô

The ‘Grupo de Capoeira Nagô’ was established May 9th 2002 in Goiania, Brazil, by C.Mestre Pequinês (former ‘Candeias’ group) and is now present in many countries, including Unites States, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy (a complete list of the countries in which is present the Nagô group is given by the flags on the left).
In Malta a first core was established by Monitor Camaleão in November 2007 in Paceville; Formado Alf started the regular training of that former group in July 2008 creating the ‘Capoeira Nagô Malta’. During the first month the group partecipated to both one exibition of the Maltese music group ‘Tribali’ and one of the Maltese flamenco school ‘Alegria’.

Formado Alf (João Paulo Ramalho Soares Da Silva) is born in Recife, Pernambuco (Brazil). He trained karate reaching the brown-belt level. He started training capoeira in 1993 and joined the ‘Candeias’ group of Mestre Suino, then he followed C.Mestre Pequines in the ‘Nagô’ group in 2002. He reached the ‘formado’ level in 2006. He used to teach in Recife where he has more than 250 students and he trained 8 ‘graduados’ that are now continuing his work there. He trained disabled children in the ‘Projeto Social’ project and is organizing workshops of capoeira around Europe. He is also a choreographer, dancer of samba, forro, frevo and other Brazilian dances, percussionist and coach of volleyball, soccer and beach soccer.

Monitor Camaleão (Luigi Marongiu) is born in Rome, Italy. He started training capoeira in 2000 with Mestre Paulinho of the ‘Carcarà’ group in Rome. In the 2003 he moved to the ‘Nagô’ group being a student of Graduado Faroeste firstly and Professor Fabricio later. He was one of the promoters of the project ‘Oficina da capoeira Castro occupato’ in Rome – a self standing training space for capoeira players – and he was selected as one of the Maculelê performers for the 2007 capoeira Nagô workshop in Rome. He wrote an introduction of the capoeira history now submitted for the publication on the Italian web site of capoeira Nagô. He moved in Malta in 2007. He has a degree in Biological sciences.