Anne Pollack (Mestra Luar do Sertão) is a 3rd level master, the highest level master of Capoeira and Afro-Brazilian arts in the state of Arizona. She trained capoeira in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1986 – 1996 with the founder of Capoeira Mandinga, Mestre Marcelo Caveirinha, while also completing her PhD in Anatomy, Cell Biology, and Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Mestra Luar has traveled in Brazil, Europe and the US to train and teach Capoeira, spending the most time in Salvador and in São Jose dos Campos where her capoeira padrinho Mestre Lobão (Capoeira Besouro Mangangá) is based. Mestra Luar received her capoeira nickname, Luar do Sertão (moonlight over the desert outback), from Mestre Suassuna many years before moving to the desert Southwest. She loves the beauty, sunsets, lightning storms and desert creatures (even the scary ones) of her Sonoran Desert home. Since moving to Tucson, Arizona in 1996 she founded Capoeira Mandinga Tucson. She has over 28 years of experience teaching ages three through adult capoeira and Afro-Brazilian arts at her group’s Capoeira Mandinga Tucson Academy, the University of Arizona, Tucson, Nogales, surrounding Pima and Santa Cruz county colleges, K-12 schools, libraries, senior centers, businesses, events and festivals. She also created GingaFitTM, a fitness program designed to make capoeira and Brazilian dance movements accessible to fitness enthusiasts of all levels, and Luar’s Bodyweight Fitness, a program to improve functional fitness by increasing full body strength, flexibility, and balance. Anne is also the director of the nonprofit Capoeira Institute Southwest which brings Afro-Brazilian capoeira, music, and dance to underserved populations in the Southwest. She has a heart-felt love of capoeira and dedication to broadening multicultural experiences for all ages. She understands the difficulty of balancing time between family, academics, work and passion for capoeira. She aims to inspire students to find their core strength by building skills to understand and express their individuality, communicate, and have fun in both the capoeira game and in every day of life.
Instrutor Pinga Fogo (Aidan Miller-Wells) started training capoeira with Capoeira Mandinga Tucson as a child. He has now trained over 17 years. He has taught capoeira at the Capoeira Mandinga Tucson Academy, Canyon View and Ventana Vista Elementary Schools, and Desert Sage High School in Tucson, AZ. He has performed, locally and internationally, showing off his abilities with different styles of capoeira including capoeira Regional, Angola, and Maneira, and Afro-Brazilian dances such as Maculelê and Dança dos Malandros. In 2023, he performed at and participated in an international capoeira Formatura event in Milan, Italy. He also performs and teaches workshops for many local arts and cultural events and festivals including Tucson Festival of Books and Tucson Meet Yourself.
Instrutor Cabeça Forte (Zac Carducci) started capoeira at a Capoeira Mandinga Tucson Summer CAMP as a child. Since then, he has never stopped training capoeira, and now has over 16 years of training under his capoeira cordão. He currently teaches capoeira at the Capoeira Mandinga Tucson Academy, focusing on kids capoeira (ages 4-12). He also teaches classes and workshops and performs for local nonprofits, refugee organizations, libraries, and schools, arts and cultural events, and festivals including Tucson Festival of Books and Tucson Meet Yourself. Recent performances include Maculelê machetes at a Capoeira Mandinga Tucson Batizado and Capoeira Maneira sequences at Tucson Meet Yourself and at an international capoeira event in Milan, Italy. In addition to capoeira, Zac worked as a Flandrau Planetarium operator, completed his Master’s degree in Education at the University of Arizona, and is currently a Math and Physics teacher at Sky Islands High School, Tucson, AZ.