Born in São Luiz do Maranhão and a resident of Bahia for 15 years, Mestra Dandara Baldez began training capoeira at the age of 5 at her grandmother's school.

At age 12, she went to her first academy outside her home, with Mestre Betinho, and at age 14, she began training in Capoeira Angola with Mestre Alberto Euzamor. In addition to Capoeira Angola, she also has a master's degree in Popular Dance from UFBA and teaches classes in the undergraduate program at this university.

The name Dandara itself evokes ancestry and resistance in a unique way. Born in São Luis do Maranhão, where she inherited a vast Bantu cultural legacy from her grandmother, Dandara traveled to the most fertile terreiros, such as Casa Fanti-Ashanti, dialoguing and learning from, among others, the Menezes family, one of the most traditional in the city, composed mainly of women of great talent and devotion, unparalleled guardians of the popular manifestations of Maranhão.A practitioner of Capoeira Angola since the age of five, she became a master in the Capoeira Angola Canzuá group. A researcher and performer, she excels in various areas of Brazilian popular culture, performing in dances and drumming groups. Dandara deconstructs and reinforces traditions, in a body that resists, rebuilds, and provokes, bringing new dimensions to languages and echoing her unique voice, which has been a gift to the city of Salvador for 15 years. She leads the Crioula drum collective "Baiei na Bahia," one of the places where she tirelessly claims space for black people and their protagonism in the ancestral manifestations of the Afro-diaspora. Anyone who encounters her in a circle never forgets her strength, skill, beauty, and mastery.

PortalCapoeira Luciano Milani April 3, 2020