No Plan B: Inside Axé Capoeira Chicago
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In this episode, Alex visits Axé Capoeira Chicago, where Mestrando Bambu (Steven Kolhouse) teaches capoeira not as a workout but as the whole Brazilian art at once—martial art, music, dance, language, and history, inseparable. Bambu walks Alex through a 28-year arc that started with a movie, ran through a 55-hour bus ride to Canada, and survived years of self-funded losses to become a two-location academy. It's the first GDO episode centered on capoeira, and it's a study in choosing depth over scale.
Starring
A non-Brazilian capoeirista who has taught for roughly 28 years and holds the rank of Mestrando under Mestre Barrão of Grupo Axé Capoeira. He discovered capoeira through the 1993 film Only the Strong, committed for life after a 55-hour bus ride to train with Barrão, and opened his Chicago academy in 2009 on a single principle: no Plan B.
Apelido Gata; Bambu's wife and co-leader of the cultural operation. She has led the academy's dance group since 2013 and runs Escola de Samba Chicago, a separate but collaborating samba school. On camera, Bambu credits her as the reason the business survived its hardest moment—early in their relationship, when the academy's lights were cut off, she paid the bill and kept the doors open.
About the Gym
Axé Capoeira Chicago is a capoeira academy in West Town with a second location in Rolling Meadows, founded by Mestrando Bambu (Steven Kolhouse), who has taught the art for roughly 28 years and holds the rank of Mestrando—one tier below master—under Mestre Barrão, founder of the global Grupo Axé Capoeira.
The academy treats Brazilian culture as the product, not an add-on: students learn the martial art alongside the music, the movement, the Portuguese, and the history that capoeira was born from. Bambu teaches capoeira while his wife Jennifer "Gata" Kolhouse runs the samba side through her own Escola de Samba Chicago, the two collaborating across performances and events. Classes run from kids as young as three up to a first-timer who was 75 on his opening day.
📍 Location (primary): 1543 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60642 (West Town)
📍 Location (second): 2180 S Plum Grove Rd, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
📱 Phone: (872) 222-8813
Summary
This is the story of a Hoosier who fell for a Brazilian art nobody around him was doing and never looked back. Mestrando Bambu saw the capoeira film Only the Strong as a kid, finally started training at Indiana University in 1998, then took a 55-hour bus ride to a workshop in Canada and came home certain: "there's nothing else in this world that I want to do."
He taught to empty rooms in Indiana college towns for years before moving to Chicago in 2004, where it "instantly took off," and opened his first academy in 2009. Today he and his wife Jennifer—apelido Gata—run a two-location school built on the conviction that capoeira only works when you teach all of it at once.
