When Coreba was volunteering at an after-school club at Framingham’s Walsh Middle School, a teacher there asked Cheryl Steele and Michele Shea, sisters from Medford who own and manage the Fitness Club for Women in Wellesley, whether they’d be interested in having Coreba teach a capoeira class at their facility.

In turn, Coreba has taught children in the favelas, or slums, of cities in Brazil. He has taught children with autism and Down syndrome, who he says soon realize that “capoeira is a place for them.’’

Capoeira’s history made then-14-year-old Marcus Coreba, already interested in martial arts, “really love it from the first time.’’

In capoeira’s late 19th- and early 20th-century incarnations, the drum would change beats, the single-stringed berimbau would stutter, the tambourine might pop, and the capoeiristas - no longer enslaved but now outlawed - would know whether to relax, or to run because trouble was near.

The music, dance, swaying, and instrumentation masked the capoeiristas’ self-defense training, kept African traditions alive, and provided joy and unrestrained movement amid their misery of living in captivity, according to the website for Coreba’s studio and other histories of Brazil.

The leg and arm movements, low center of balance, feints, close attention to surroundings, and sounds that constitute capoeira were developed by unarmed West and Central Africans seeking to escape and to evade recapture after arriving on slave ships in Brazil beginning in the 16th century. Their pursuers were weapon-carrying, horse-mounted Portuguese landowners.

“You can never find an end in capoeira,’’ Coreba said over lunch with Giselle and their 16-month-old son, Davi.

Now as local ambassadors for capoeira, they teach classes in Wellesley, Framingham, and Boston, as well as at their Marlborough studio. No matter the venue, students sing, play, laugh, dance, learn a little Portuguese, a little history, a little music, and have a lot of fun.

Coreba fell in love with the discipline and dance form as a teenager in Brazil. He met Giselle, who would become his wife, at a capoeira class in Belo Horizonte. Since then they have traveled the world, and made a family.

Actor Vincent Cassel used capoeira to evade a laser security system in “Ocean’s Twelve.’’ Martial arts expert Wesley Snipes uses it in his films. It shows up in role-playing video games, break dancing, television series like “Stargate,’’ and Paul Simon music videos; it even made an appearance in the movie version of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,’’ as a technique for wizards from the Durmstrang Institute.

Born centuries ago in a time of slavery, capoeira now rivals soccer, samba, and fashion as Brazil’s biggest export.

“Dance & Fight Cultural Center’’ promises the sign outside Marcus Coreba’s capoeira studio in Marlborough. Capoeira, a beautiful, lethal blend of music, dance, and martial art, is part of the American Dream - the South American Dream.

But “capoeira fitness,’’ which involves stretching and rhythmic dancing, turned out not to be enough. The class wanted the whole capoeira experience.

So Coreba took them to one of his adult classes in Chinatown to watch, and, if they wanted, to take part in a roda.

The women loved it.

“It was exhilarating and terrifying,’’ said Wellesley resident Jan Ohnemus.

A roda is simply a circle. But that is like saying baseball is simply a game.

To see a half-dozen women from Wellesley, Concord, Natick, and Medford cartwheeling, with energy and abandon, into a roda, and swaying to movements developed 500 years ago to battle armed horsemen, is jaw-dropping.

“I’m usually a cynic about most things,’’ Ohnemus said. “But this is the most wonderful thing to ever come down the pike as far as I’m concerned.’’

Coreba is a composer and writes many of the lyrics to his songs about the history of capoeira. He plays the instruments to accompany the rodas, sings his own songs, and has a website, www.capoeirageraisboston.com, with historical information and class schedules.

Giselle Coreba has recently branched out as a personal trainer. In addition to their son, the Corebas have a daughter, Janaime, who was born when they lived and taught in Spain. The family lives in Marlborough.

Carrie Chandler, a fifth-grade teacher at Framingham’s Brophy School who volunteers at the Marlborough studio, helped Marcus Coreba wrangle a class of 7- to 11-year-olds on a recent night. She said his studio, Gerais Capoeira (which roughly means Capoeira for Everyone), has just one annual batizado, or baptism ceremony, in which you can step up in rank, so if you don’t pass you have to wait a year for the next chance.

Last fall, for the first time, Chandler trained three students on the ginga, the first move. They passed their batizado in December. “I have never been so proud,’’ she said. “This really is my family.’’

Each student gets a nickname at his or her first batizado.

“Marquinho’’ is Coreba’s apelido, the nickname he took at his first batizado, in his hometown of Vitoria, Espirito Santo.

There are no more batizados for Coreba. He is a contre mestre, which means “the step before master.’’ Coreba’s own master lives in Brazil, and will decide when he is ready to move up.

“The test is the work I am doing with capoeira and teaching people to be good citizens,’’ Coreba says. “It’s not a game. It’s all part of an evaluation.’’

Gene Cassidy can be reached at ehcassidy@gmail.com.

© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company.