Add some new moves to your crime-fighting dance arsenal with today’s deal: four drop-in dance classes at Roda Movements in Takoma Park for $34. New students of every age will get to choose from capoeira, salsa, belly dancing, and other equally dancy types of workouts on the studio’s convenient schedule. Ordinarily, this level of instruction would cost $68, or would incur the unknown opportunity cost of sailing your makeshift bathtub raft all the way to Bahia, Brazil.

Whichever classes you pick, you’ll definitely want to leave a slot or two open for “Instructor Busho” Roberto Tapia’s capoeira class. This increasingly popular social workout is an Afro-Brazilian martial art created by enslaved Africans in Brazil, who honed their fighting skills by disguising them as dance moves, a feat of awesomeness unparalleled in dancing history. You’ll get to do the same. If you’re not inside the roda (circle) engaging in a little fluid, acrobatic, non-contact sparring with a partner, you’ll be part of the circle, creating your own high-energy fight music with authentic instruments such as the berimbau, drums, and tambourine. Check out this Telemundo report on Roda, which will show you a few of the moves you’ll learn, and remind you to brush up on your Spanish:

If you feel like you need to get in shape for capoeira before you can start getting in shape with capoeira, start by toning and twisting your core in Roda’s belly-dancing class. Give your dance moves an energy blast with zumba, or loosen your limbs with a little salsa. Not only will you get in great shape and meet new people, but capoeira will finally give you the street-fighting skills you need to defeat Blanka on his own turf.

Reviews

Gazette.net, Metromix, and Telemundo recently featured Roda Movements’ capoeira class:

• I’ve always been into martial arts, but capoeira is just more energetic than any of the others… I feel bad if I don’t come; it’s like an addiction. – Solomon Foster, quoted by Jeremy Arias for Gazette.net