Mestre Faísca

Luís Roberto Ricardo was born in São José do Rio Pardo, in the interior of São Paulo state. His father was José Ricardo Filho; his mother, Maria Aparecida da Silva Ricardo, raised him and his seven siblings alone in humble circumstances. To support her children, Maria did laundry and cooked in families' homes, sometimes working during the day in a hotel kitchen and at night in a restaurant.

It was as a teenager that Faísca first began practicing the movements of capoeira. This happened in São José do Rio Pardo with a local capoeirista named Luiz Carlos Viana, who later abandoned capoeira. But Faísca persevered. He started teaching capoeira in the town of Mococa, São Paulo, where he founded his first group. He later sought mentorship from Mestre Izael Teixeira in São Carlos, São Paulo, who accepted him—though Izael focused on Capoeira Regional de Mestre Bimba rather than Angola.

In 1991, at the University of São Paulo (USP), Faísca had his first lesson with Mestre João Pequeno de Pastinha. As he later said, João Pequeno was "the most important person in the world in capoeira" at that moment. This encounter changed everything.

In 1996, Faísca moved to Salvador to be close to his mestre. He soon integrated the Academia de João Pequeno de Pastinha – Centro Esportivo de Capoeira Angola, located in the 17th-century fortress Forte Santo Antônio Além do Carmo. That same year, he began teaching in the Vale das Pedrinhas community in Rio Vermelho—a peripheral neighborhood characterized by poverty, high crime rates, and the absence of state services.

On October 14, 2001, in an event at the Academia do Forte Santo Antônio Além do Carmo, Luís Roberto Ricardo received from Mestre João Pequeno the title of "mestre," which formally introduced him as Mestre Faísca to the capoeira community.

The Zebra Dance Cultural Center (CEDANZE) had been born in Brazil in 1989, in the cities of Mococa and São José do Rio Pardo, São Paulo. When it was officially registered in 2003 in Salvador, Bahia, Faísca constituted a Council of Honor with a lifetime position chaired by Dr. João Pereira dos Santos (Mestre João Pequeno de Pastinha), along with Dr. Ângelo Augusto Decânio Filho (Mestre Decânio) and the filmmaker and writer Mestre Jair Moura.

João Pequeno guided Faísca to "keep CECA alive and the name of his academy." When João Pequeno died on December 9, 2011, Faísca assumed leadership of the lineage as his designated successor, continuing the direct tradition from Mestre Africano Benedito through Pastinha and João Pequeno.

Today, CEDANZE Internacional – Academia João Pequeno de Pastinha – CECA operates from its headquarters in Rio Vermelho, Vale das Pedrinhas, Salvador. The organization has centers across Brazil (Poços de Caldas, Florianópolis, Maragogipe, São Francisco do Conde), Europe (Paris, Milan, Brussels, Coimbra, Madrid, Lausanne, Cuenca), and Latin America (Montevideo, Santiago). In 2012, Le Centre Culturel Danse du Zèbre was officially established in Paris under French law.

For over 30 years, Faísca's work in Vale das Pedrinhas has focused on providing education and culture to young people from peripheral communities—using traditional Capoeira Angola as a vehicle for socio-educational transformation while preserving the Afro-Brazilian civilizing values contained in the tradition.