The Dissimulation Game: Power play and choice in the performer-audience exchange as modelled on Capoeira Angola

This practice research thesis explores how power play in the Afro-Brazilian practice of Capoeira Angola might be transposed onto participatory performance. The first chapter presents Capoeira Angola as a decolonial practice, traces a brief history of the practice and offers key aspects of its knowledge within the context of this project. How the latter might inform a performance praxis rooted in improvisation follows, analysing the overlaps and divergences between Capoeira Angola and performance and discussing the role of the audience, participation, and Rancière’s idea of dissensus. The second chapter presents an analysis of Capoeira Angola as a game in order to identify the structuring mechanisms for the power play that emerges. The analysis draws from scholarly material on Capoeira, game design, game philosophy, as well as my embodied knowledge of Capoeira practice of 20 years. Key ideas that bring the two chapters together are choice, play, ambiguity/uncertainty and emergence. These feed into the third chapter, which charts the development of the practice research culminating in the participatory performance If It Was Up to Me. More specifically, the performance is unpacked in terms of the structures it employs dramaturgically as well as the mechanics of choice in each section with correlations to the structures and knowledge in Capoeira. This is followed by a critical reflection of the practice, where the complexities of choice and emergence are framed from an emic perspective.