Student of Mestre Suassuna and creator of the capoeira clothing brand Folha Seca de Capoeira. Jana arrived in Munich to show share our beautiful art, and discover a new culture for herself. Jana lives for Capoeira, always training, and training hard, but always with a smile!

Interview with Contra Mestra Jana

Below is a lightly edited translation of a transcript of the original interview:

What is your real name?

My name is Janaina, Janaina Crivelli Ehrlein and in capoeira it’s Jana.

When did you start in Capoeira?

I started on April 15th, 99.

How did you come to start Capoeira?

I had seen it once in Bahia when I was 13 years old at a show, but I was very young and had no capoeira near my home.

I moved house and one day I was walking on the street and I saw that two blocks from my house there was a capoeira academy. I went up, it was a Thursday, Mestre Suassuna was there and I said “Hi I want to take a class” and he answered, “If you want you can do it now!”.

I did the class, tried makulelê, the roda, everything. I loved it and I stayed!

Who is your Mestre?

Mestre Suassuna, always has been.

How was training at the Cordão de Ouro Matrix?

It is difficult, when we are new to capoeira we have no idea. I started happily with Mestre Suassuna but I did not know who he was, for me he was an important person who was there, but the one who taught was Mestre Tourinho.

Mestre Suassuna always gave the class on Thursday for the advanced students. Mestre Boca was there, in the advanced class, but as I was young I started with Tourinho.

It took a while for the Mestre to call me to train separately. It was difficult, because it was Mestre Suassuna’s academy, the main academy where he stayed, there were many people, the rodas were always more difficult, the classes always harder. I don’t know if harder than in other places, but it was tough. There weren’t a lot of women, so it was really cool, very good that I started there, but it was difficult.

What was it like to grow up in this capoeira group?

I went through different classes, different affinities, moments, right? As there weren’t many other women to train with, I always trained a lot with Kibe and Ivan. They were my training partners, and I was friends with Boca from the beginning.

Boca was my neighbor at home, and we liked the same songs, the same things … Mentirinha, Habibis, who were more my age, which is different from Mestre Kibe’s and Mestre Ivan’s. So I had my training group, which was not necessarily the same group I hung out with. I hung out with the older boys, my samba class, from other experiences, my first friend was Mestre Boca and the group that came in the combo, right!

From the training class I went through phases because and I trained a lot with Ivan and Kibe, but they moved up, they already had a more capoeira time than me. Ivan remained my training partner though, we have always been friends and training partners.

I spent some time outside capoeira because of my knee and work, when I came back there was another group. They were already on the other level, traveling a lot, another class came in, which was the class I graduated from. Joyce, Grazi, who didn’t train with us but we met. Mari, my super friend she is in the first group of Boca. Classes are difficult because they are different from training and those with whom I hang out.

How did you feel about leaving Brazil and moving to Germany?

In fact, I didn’t think about it much in advance. If we think too much, I think we don’t do some things! When I was in Brazil, my training was artistic education, I did art and drawing. My work has always been something else, Capoeira was my hobby.

But I trained every day. I had never thought about teaching, there were some things that made me think. First it was graduation, I told Mestre that I couldn’t be a Professora if I didn’t teach. Mestre Suassuna said to me “If you don’t want to give classes, why am I going to graduate you?”. And along with that Passarinho’s wife got pregnant and he couldn’t teach his classes anymore, and he passed them on to me. I started teaching but I worked on other things, with the Folha Seca brand, it was the same year that I started working with capoeira clothes, capoeira design. I wanted to connect what was my profession with something focused on capoeira.

Then Primo brought me once with Mestre Suassuna for his event and when I saw all the women, like 70-80% or so women, I said… I need to come and teach here! I came back to Brazil and I knew that my boyfriend’s family is German, but I didn’t know that he was born in Germany, and it was very good because I really wanted to have the opportunity to travel in Europe, teach women and see how it was. And he said, well I’m German, we’re going home!

His father lived in Germany and we said, let’s try. We’ll go and stay a year to see if it works, because we can’t know beforehand if it will or won’t. He started working and I started teaching capoeira only after six months.
It’s crazy because it is another culture, you have to learn their culture and also pass on the culture of Brazil, find a balance, but it is being a very cool experience. You build the group from zero, the history of capoeira there.

How is it living a long way from your Mestre?

It’s difficult, mainly because I, who’d never thought of teaching, I’d always had a student’s eye. I think when a person wants to teach from the beginning, they starts differently; the way you pay attention in class, you pay attention to how he teaches the class… I just wanted to be a student. I had to change my whole mindset both to teach and to train alone. I trained a lot on my own and I think it helped a lot.

Mestre Suassuna’s academy is always open, and at many times in my life I worked at crazy times that didn’t match the normal class schedules, and so for me it was always very common to go to the gym, me alone, train and come back. It wasn’t so difficult because I had this habit of training alone, but there was always someone to talk to, or the Mestre or the friends who were there.

Family, friends and the teacher, I think it’s the hardest part of being abroad, because you’re just you. You have to make it happen, you have to train, you have to teach, if you don’t do it, nobody will do it for you, nobody will tell you to do it.

What would be your advice for someone just starting out in Capoeira?

The basic thing is to train, right ?! I will not repeat the obvious. Train! What I say to my students, because capoeira is very complex if we stop to think, in the roda itself, there are instruments, there is the singing, there is the choir, there is the clapping, you have to watch, think, play… and I think we have to be patient.

Though it is difficult, at the same time it is simple. Just because you only know how to do a meia lua de frente and a queixada doesn’t mean you can’t play, you can’t have fun or you can’t learn, or even teach. I feel that I, until today I have this; there’s so much information and we want to learn everything at once. The information age, right?! But you can’t learn everything at once, because you have to understand what capoeira is. You need to go slowly.

Of course, if you like it and want to train all day, that’s cool. It makes a big difference, once a week, twice a week or everyday. But I think that the important thing is enjoying the little you know, I like to use the word “vivência”. Because we have to live capoeira to understand, and to live capoeira you have to do more than just train and play. I know people who are capoeiristas through and through, who do not necessarily train lots of capoeira, but are there all day with the mestre, talk, and who play in the bateria.

It means living capoeira, and for that you need time. Love what you’ve learned, want to learn more, but really live it.