Inside a small studio at 12th and Race streets bordering Philadelphia's Chinatown, they're teaching something rather large.
Adenilson Jose Dos Santos is the man doing the teaching, having learned the lessons himself the hard way.
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"I'm here today thanks to capoeira. Capoeira made the man I am today," he said.
Dos Santos arrived in Philadelphia after having moved out of Brazil. He landed in New York with no money and no housing. His culture, he says, is what sustained him.
That culture is now on full display inside a space called "Project Capoeira."
As he describes it, it's one part music, one part martial arts, and one part cuisine all connected by a mentality born in Brazil.
"It's a source of energy and everybody likes to feel that energy," said Jose Santos.
On the streets of São Paulo, it makes more sense. That energy flows through like the notorious traffic -- constant and infused into everything.
On these streets, capoeira isn't quite as hard to translate, it just is who they are, what they are, and why they are.