Joyce Rodrigues Peres has been involved in Capoeira and Brazilian arts since she was a young child in Brazil. Growing up in São Paulo, one of the largest cities in Latin America, gave her a global perspective and access to many different cultures and cultural contexts.

She has been heavily involved in Capoeira for 20 years and has been training and travelling with the art for 16 years.

Her first experiences were with her brother and her first teacher in the suburbs, where she trained for 3 years with Mestre Xuxo who is from the same suburb as Joyce. When he left to work with Capoeira in Europe Joyce began her training under the guidance of Grande Mestre Suassuna in the centre of São Paulo at Cordão de Ouro head quarters.

She has been a disciple of Mestre Suassuna for 10 years in Brazil and in 2014 she moved to the UK and co-founded the first Brazilian Cultural Centre CDOB in Birmingham. Since she has been here in Europe she has been under very high demand, travelling almost every weekend to different festivals in various countries to teach and perform.

Joyce is one of the top female Cordão de Ouro Capoeiristas in Europe and in 2013 she graduated in the first ever all female Cordão de Ouro formatura of Capoeira professors held in Ilhéus Bahia and run by Mestre Suassuna himself. Her years of experience and her international travels have given her a unique view of how Capoeira and Brazilian arts have been developed globalised taught and performed worldwide.

In 2015 Joyce was invited to partake in the "this girl can" project in Birmingham celebrating active women and celebrating international women's day. This resulted in her creating a new festival which has become an annual success. "Maria do Camboata" is a weekend festival hosted in Birmingham designed to engage women (and men) to celebrate International women's day, and some of the worlds top female Capoeira artists. The event has participants of all genders and backgrounds from across the globe, and the female artists who teach and perform also share their personal experiences and cultural contexts. This event has become a huge inspiration and sparked many further projects to provoke a better understanding of how culture and the arts can be a means for social change.