By Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD

In my blog post Addressing Race in Ballet and Capoeira, I discussed Find Your Center’s commitment to bringing race and social justice explicitly into our dance and capoeira classrooms. Here I share my experience doing this with my Children's Ballet class for 7-10 year-olds in early June. This is part of an ongoing effort to incorporate history and context into our dance and martial arts curricula. 
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• ​Make it relevant. Find the underlying emotions and experiences that children can relate to. Invite children to talk about their experiences, but don't insist if they don't want to.
• Draw on school knowledge. Ask open-ended questions about what your students have learned in school, and build on that knowledge in your conversation. 
• Use what children tell you, not what you assume. If a child shares their family history, identity, or experiences, then build on those to draw connections with the material you're teaching. Don't assume that a child or family identifies with a particular racial or ethnic group.
• ​Don't put anyone on the spot. You may have some children & families who have more personal experiences with racism than others. Don't make assumptions about their experiences,  and don't expect that those who have experienced racism directly will want to share. 
• Relate it to your subject matter. It's okay to get off topic when there's something that needs to be dealt with immediately. But the long-term goal of embedding racial equity in your curriculum requires figuring out how it relates to what you're already teaching.
• Make it your own. Leave out the questions and discussion points that are less interesting to you. Let your own and your students’ experiences and knowledge guide you.

​

Children's Ballet is a 60-minute live online class that I teach for 7-10 year-olds. The class follows a typical ballet format with floor warm-up, barre, and centre exercises. I incorporate history, context, and critical thinking in a variety of ways. In this class we watched the 6-minute video "Dance Theatre of Harlem: Arthur Mitchell Tribute" published in 2019. This lesson built on another one that I discuss in my post on History and Struggle.

Dance Theatre of Harlem: Arthur Mitchell Tribute

Learning Objectives

• Students will be able to appreciate the contributions of Arthur Mitchell and Dance Theatre of Harlem to American ballet.
• Students will be able to reflect on their own experiences of belonging and not belonging.

Introduction (Pre-Video)

• Has anyone every heard of a place called Harlem? Harlem is a neighborhood in New York City. Have you heard of New York City?
• Has anyone been to a big city like Seattle?

Insert here any big city that is close to your students.

• In big cities there are lots of different neighborhoods. Sometimes there are whole neighborhoods that are mostly just one ethnic group. 
• In our last class we talked about African Americans and European Americans and Mexican Americans. These are all different ethnic groups. They are groups of Americans who have common cultural roots. 
  
• An ethnic group might have a common language or a common way of speaking English. They might have common cultural practices, like religion or clothing or food or celebrations. They might look similar to each other.
• Even here in our small city of Pasco, we have parts of the city that are mostly Mexican American, where it's common for people to speak Mexican Spanish, wear Mexican cowboy boots, eat Mexican food, and celebrate quinceañ​eras. That's what downtown Pasco is like, where we used to have our classes before we moved everything online.

Give a local example that your students are likely to be familiar with.

• So Harlem is a neighborhood in New York City that is mostly African American. Most of the people who live there have African ancestry. That means that either they or their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents or someone in their family a long time ago came from the continent of Africa. Because they're African American, their families share common experiences. They also look similar to each other. Most have dark skin and would call themselves Black.
• This is a video about a ballet company that is called Dance Theatre of Harlem. It's based in this neighborhood called Harlem.
  
• The man who founded the company is Arthur Mitchell, and we're going to learn about him and why he started his ballet company.

 
Wrap-Up (Post-Video)

• ​Why do you think Mr. Mitchell left New York City Ballet to start a different company?

If students have a response to this question, make sure you acknowledge and discuss their ideas.

• Have you ever been in a situation where you felt uncomfortable?

One of my students described an experience where she had to give a speech onstage at school and everyone was staring at her and it made her feel uncomfortable.

• When Arthur Mitchell was dancing for New York City Ballet, he might have had that same feeling, like everyone was staring at him. Not because he was performing onstage--that was normal, it was his job. But he might have felt like everyone was staring at him because he looked different. In the video they showed that he looked different than the other dancers at New York City Ballet. He was the only one who was Black.
• He might have felt different than the other dancers too. Maybe he felt like he had to change the way he talked and the clothes he wore so that he could fit in.
• Even though he was one of the best dancers in the New York City Ballet, maybe he quit because he didn't feel comfortable there. 
• Maybe he wanted kids in Harlem, the neighborhood where he grew up, to be able to learn ballet without feeling uncomfortable--without feeling like everyone was looking at them because they looked different, and without feeling like they had to talk and act differently than what they were used to.
• Mr. Mitchell brought ballet to kids in his ethnic neighborhood, instead of bringing them out of their neighborhood into a place where they might not have felt as comfortable, like he had to do when he wanted to learn ballet.
• At Find Your Center, we did something similar. We taught our classes in downtown Pasco and in Spanish, so that it would be comfortable for the families who live in that part of town, instead of forcing them to go to another part of town where they might not feel as comfortable.

Pay attention to how your students respond to your words. Make sure to offer opportunities for your students to contribute their thoughts, and make sure to acknowledge and build on their comments.

• Does the Dance Theatre of Harlem look like a fun school? Maybe someday we can go visit. For now, let's take that fun energy and put it into our own dancing for the rest of class!

​

I like this video because it's joyful and celebratory. It reminds me of the triumphs that come out of struggle, the strength and resilience of communities, and the power that each of has to create a vision and see it through. These reminders are important in moments when it feels like we're struggling against all odds. For children who may not be as aware of the broader issues our society is struggling with, this video offers inspiration for the great things they can accomplish, both as students and as they grow up and become professionals.

This video also offered opportunities for my students to draw connections with their own lives. It gave them a window into a professional ballet school, which helped them contextualize their own training at a recreational school and gain respect for the art of ballet. It allowed us to explore in more depth the concept of ethnicity, which I had introduced in the previous class. We were able to make connections with ethnic groups in our own city, and with personal experiences of belonging and not belonging, social comfort and discomfort.

This video brings up many complex issues that can be discussed with adults and teens as well. It's great for all age levels because there are many subtleties that can be addressed or left alone, depending on the age group.

By Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD

In my blog post Addressing Race in Ballet and Capoeira, I discussed Find Your Center’s commitment to bringing race and social justice explicitly into our dance and capoeira classrooms. Here I share my experience doing this with my Children's Ballet class for 7-10 year-olds in early June. This is part of an ongoing effort to decolonize our curricula and educate our students in social justice as well as dance and martial arts. 
​​

• ​Make it relevant. Find the underlying emotions and experiences that children can relate to. Invite children to talk about their experiences, but don't insist if they don't want to.
• Draw on school knowledge. Ask some open-ended questions about what the kids have learned in school, and build on that knowledge in your conversation. 
• Use what children tell you, not what you assume. If a child shares their family history, identity, or experiences, then build on those to draw connections with the material you're teaching. Don't assume that a child or family identifies with a particular racial or ethnic group.
• ​Don't put anyone on the spot. You may have some children & families who are more likely to have personal experiences with racism than others. Don't make assumptions about their experiences,  and don't expect that those who have experienced racism will want to share. 
• Relate it to your subject matter. It's okay to get off topic when there's something that needs to be dealt with immediately. But the long-term goal of embedding racial equity in your curriculum requires figuring out how it relates to what you were already teaching.
• Make it your own. Use my discussion points as a guide, but put it into your own words. Let your own and your students’ experiences and knowledge guide you.​

​

​Children's Ballet is a 60-minute live online class for 7-10 year-olds. The class follows a typical ballet format with floor warm-up, barre, and centre exercises. I incorporate history, context, and critical thinking in a variety of ways. In this class we watched the first 3 minutes of the video "Revelations from a lifetime of dance - Judith Jamison and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater," a TED Talk published in 2019.

Alvin Ailey's "Wade in the Water" from ​Revelations (0:00-3:00)

Learning Objectives

• Students will be able to appreciate the work of classically trained African American dancers and choreographers.
• Students will be able to reflect on historical struggles experienced by African Americans and other ethnic groups.

Introduction (Pre-Video)

• This week we're talking about African Americans in ballet. Does anyone know what African American means?

One student guessed that African American might mean Africans who are in America.

• African Americans are Americans whose families, maybe recently or maybe many generations ago, came from Africa.
• All of us are American because we live here in America. But most of our families came from other places before living here. Do you know if your family came from another place?

​One student said her grandparents came from Germany. Another said that her mom came from Mexico.

• If our family comes from Germany, we might call ourselves German American, or European American because Germany is in Europe. If our family comes from Mexico, we might call ourselves Mexican American, or Latina because Mexico is in Latin America. People whose families come from a country in Africa might call themselves African American.
• Many African American families first came to this country as slaves. They were taken from their homes and forced to come here and work for other people without getting paid. Have you learned anything about this in school?

​My students nodded but didn't offer any details.

• This dance company is a mostly African American dance company, and a lot of the dances they perform are about African American experiences.
• The dance we're going to watch is to a song called "Wade in the Water," which is an African American spiritual, a song people sing in church.
• Do you know what it means to wade in the water? ...Wading is walking through water.

One of my students remembered learning in school that slaves walked through rivers to escape the dogs sent after them when they tried to escape.

• So when they talk about wading in the water in this song, they're talking about African Americans escaping from slavery.
• It can also be about Jews escaping from slavery in Egypt. Does anyone know about that story in the Bible?

One of my students remembered the Bible story.

• ​It can also be about anyone who is escaping a difficult situation, like maybe people crossing the river between Mexico and the United States to escape civil war and other kinds of violence.
• So this song and this dance are about struggle and hope and fighting for a better life. Let's watch.

Wrap-Up (Post-Video)

• ​What did you think of the dance? How did it make you feel?

My students said they liked it, and weren't sure how they felt.

• There are some things that are difficult to talk about, or that we don't know how to talk about, and sometimes we can express those things through dance.
• One thing I think is really cool about this dance is that we can relate to it emotionally, even though it's about something that we've never experienced ourselves. None of us have escaped from slavery. We can't really imagine what that's like, but in some way we can relate to the experience through this dance.

​

I like this clip for school-aged children because it draws on a historical story that they have probably learned about in some form, and makes it relatable through dance. It addresses violence implicitly but not explicitly, offering children tools to process a mature subject without exposing them directly to violent content.

My pre- and post-video discussion helps kids of all backgrounds relate to the experience that the dancers and choreographer are expressing. The video shows one of the best modern dance companies in the world, and exemplifies the power of the arts to help us as a society process complex social issues.

​For adults and teenagers, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater offers a wealth of powerful performances by world-class dancers and choreographers portraying some of the most difficult moments in our history. "Wade in the Water" emphasizes triumph and hope in a way that is accessible for school-aged children, and gives them context to process the historical struggles that they'll come to understand more deeply as they get older.

By Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD

In my recent blog post Addressing Race in Ballet and Capoeira, I discussed Find Your Center’s commitment to bringing race and social justice explicitly into our dance and capoeira classrooms. Here I share my experience doing this with my 2-4 year-old Bilingual Creative Movement class in early June. This is part of an ongoing effort to decolonize our curricula and educate our students in social justice as well as dance and martial arts. 

• Make it relevant. Find the underlying emotions and experiences that young children can relate to. 
• Use nonverbal communication. Have kids participate through moving, clapping, and body language. 
• Don't put anyone on the spot. You may have some children & families who are more likely to have personal experiences with racism than others. Don't make assumptions about their experiences,  and don't expect that those who have experienced racism will want to share. 
• Relate it to your subject matter. It's okay to get off topic when there's something that needs to be dealt with immediately. But the long-term goal of embedding racial equity in your curriculum requires figuring out how it relates to what you were already teaching.
• Make it your own. Leave out the questions and discussion points that are less interesting to you. Let your own and your students’ experiences and knowledge guide you.

​

Bilingual Creative Movement is a 30-minute live online class for 2-4 year-olds. I teach the class in Spanish and English and teach pre-ballet and pre-capoeira concepts through creative movement. I've written this lesson plan in English, but my discussion with the children was bilingual. It was centered around the video "Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater" on the channel The Call to Unite.

The Call to Unite - Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Learning Objectives

• Students will be able to appreciate African American contributions to dance and music.
• Students will be able to appreciate their own beauty and that of each individual.
• Students will be able to experience and/or articulate how coming together can help us through difficult moments.

Note: I skipped the introduction and started this video at 0:59 to make it shorter for my young audience. I could teach a whole different lesson just using the first minute of this video. I would focus on the concept of English and Spanish (which we speak in our class) being different languages, and tell the kids that people speak lots of different languages all over the world. I would ask the children if they recognize any words they hear in the video, and if anyone in the video speaks or looks like anyone they know. I would remind them how we say hello to each other in Spanish and English in our class, and then we would transition into the next part of our class.

Introduction (Pre-Video)

• Do your parents have jobs that they do all day? For the people in this video, their job is to dance.
• The dancers in this video are in their separate homes but dancing together through their computers, just like we are. You can dance along with them if you want to.
• When do you get sad? Angry? Who do you like to be with when you’re sad or angry?

My students said they like to be with their stuffed animals and dolls.

• Even though we’re all separated in our own separate homes now, just like these dancers in the video we come together to dance and dancing together can make us feel better when we’re lonely or sad.
• Do you know any of the letters you see on the screen?

My older students recognized the letter "A" and the letter "m," which are in their names.

• It says, “The most beautiful thing in the world is you.” – Alvin Ailey.
• Alvin Ailey is the name of the person who said this, and the person who created this group of dancers and the dance that they are doing.
• When you dance along to this video, you should feel beautiful and see how beautiful all the dancers in the video are too.

Wrap-Up (Post-Video)

• Did you have fun dancing? Did you feel beautiful?
• Did you like the moves they did?
• Did their dance look like things we do in our class?
  
• They did some ballet steps. They did some West African dance steps, which are similar to capoeira movements. They clapped their hands to the music like we do.
• The steps they did are harder than what we do, because they are professional dancers who have been practicing a lot more than us!

​

I like this video for young children because it is joyful while also acknowledging sadness. The "Bosom of Abraham" referred to in the song is a place of comfort. Children don't have to understand the reference or be raised in a Biblical tradition to understand the concepts of sadness and comfort. Families are dealing with the stresses of a pandemic, social unrest, and economic uncertainty. This lesson validates the negative emotions children might be feeling in their households, and helps them deal with those emotions by coming together through dance and music.

​The coming together that children see in this video is multiracial. Because we are meeting online from our homes and the dancers in the video are also meeting online from their homes, it feels like they are coming into our classroom. We see dancers who look predominantly Black and mixed, joining a classroom of children who are white, mixed, and Latinx. This normalizes Blackness and normalizes racial diversity. 

I also emphasize to my students that the dancers in the video are different from us in one important way. They are professionals. They do what we do, but better. These are the people we should look up to.

By Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD

Racial equity within ballet and capoeira has always been an important part of our mission at Find Your Center. It is implicit in everything we do. The events of the past few weeks have led us to realize that we need to make this work more explicit: 
​

• It is not enough to welcome students of color into our classrooms. We also need to talk with all of our students about why most American ballet schools are so overwhelmingly white.

 

• It is not enough to teach a martial art with African origins. We also need to teach our students how those origins have been obscured and appropriated by white institutions.

 

• It is not enough to be a Black- and woman-owned business. We also need to show our students Black dancers and capoeira masters who they can look up to.

​

• It is not enough for me to use my skills as a cultural anthropologist to communicate competently with families of color. I also need to facilitate discussions of race and diversity in my dance classroom.

​

We believe that race and social justice are relevant in all of the work that everyone does every day, not just during moments of crisis. Joining together in protest, advocating for justice, and demanding humane policies are our duties as citizens, in whatever forms these actions take for each of us. Beyond this, our everyday work needs to be guided by respect, compassion, a willingness to see, and a willingness to listen.

We are committed to bringing social justice explicitly into our dance and martial arts curricula from here on out. We want every student at Find Your Center to be able to express, in age-appropriate ways, issues of racial inequity in the arts they are learning. All of our students should be able to appreciate the struggles and contributions of Black dancers and martial artists, as well as other marginalized groups.
​

As an anthropologist running a dance school, I recognize that I am possibly in a unique situation. Most dance teachers are not trained to facilitate discussions of race. I believe that needs to change, and I hope that the work we are doing at Find Your Center will help change it.

Predominantly Black dance schools and companies like Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey do not have the luxury of not talking about race. It is a privilege of predominantly white dance schools to be able to remain silent. White dancers cannot continue to put the burden on our students and colleagues of color to educate us about their experiences. We need to make sure that our students see. We need to give our students space to talk respectfully, space to remain silent, and space to express their complex emotions through movement.

We must make mistakes—and correct them—in order to learn. This is true in dance and martial arts, and it is true in discussing race and inequality. We don’t always know what to say. Sometimes we hurt each other without realizing it. Our job as teachers is to make our classrooms supportive spaces where we can call each other out on our mistakes, correct them, and learn.
​

Art is a powerful tool for communicating experiences that we don’t know how to talk about. As an art whose canvas is the body, dance is a particularly powerful tool for conveying the kinds of unspeakable acts that we as a society are grappling with now—brutality, genocide, claiming ownership of other people’s bodies. Dance performances that address these issues can serve as prompts for discussions and reflection on racial injustice in churches, homes, and workplaces, not just dance schools.

Dance is also a powerful tool for communicating emotions and encouraging children to express their emotions in productive ways. Some children are experiencing racial tensions personally and emotionally, while others have little awareness of them. Dance videos can serve as inspiration, permission, and an invitation for children to share emotions they may not understand.
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By sharing and valuing the contributions of Black artists in ballet and capoeira, we also teach our children to look up to Black role models. We make race visible. We don’t allow ourselves to look the other way. 
​

Click on one of the blog posts below for examples of how to bring race and social justice into your dance and capoeira classrooms in age-appropriate ways:

Teaching Race to Young Children: Unity and Black Role Models
Teaching Race to Grade School Children: History and Struggle
Teaching Race to Grade School Children: Ethnicity and Belonging

​By Kate F Robins and DeShawn "Quiabo" Robins

For Spring Break next week, we're sending our students recommended ballet, capoeira, and flamenco movies to enjoy at home. We found most of these on YouTube, and many are available on other streaming services as well (Netflix, Amazon, etc).
​

A Ballerina's Tale (unrated/ all ages)
The Company (PG13/ all ages)
Billy Elliot (R for language/ all ages)
​Leap (PG/ kids)
White Nights (PG13/ adults)
Black Swan (R/ adults)

Only the Strong (PG13/ all ages)
Fight Science - Stealth Fighters by National Geographic (all ages)
Mestre Xuxo - Enjoy Yourself (available on Amazon; all ages)
Undisputed 3: Redemption (R/ adults)
The Protector (R/ adults)

Flamenco Flamenco by Carlos Saura (unrated/ all ages)
El Amor Bruja by Carlos Saura (PG/ all ages)
Flamenco Hoy by Carlos Saura (all ages)
Carmen by Carlos Saura & Antonio Gades, Teatro Real de España (all ages)

By Kate Feinberg Robins

Find Your Center transicionó suavemente de clases en nuestra escuela a clases virtuales apenas el Gobernador Inslee anunció las clausuras de las escuelas de Washington el día 13 de marzo. Para lunes 16 ya estábamos enseñando todas nuestras clases en sus horarios programados, conectándonos virtualmente con nuestros estudiantes desde nuestro nuevamente configurado “estudio en casa.” Desde el principio hemos tenido un salón virtual seguro, monitoreado para que no entre nadie que no esté inscrito en la clase. Nunca hemos compartido fotos o videos de casas ajenas y no lo haremos sin permiso explícito.
 
Durante estas dos semanas, hemos entregado la misma instrucción de alta calidad en grupos pequeños que nuestros estudiantes nos han llegado a esperar, a través de las reuniones en línea. Aunque no podemos ofrecer nuestro estudio espacioso, piso de baile profesional, barras de ballet y bolsa de patadas, hemos aprovechado de la oportunidad de enseñar a nuestros estudiantes cómo practicar en sus propios espacios en sus casas.
 
Nuestras clases siguen siendo interactivas, respondiendo y adaptándanos a las necesidades de cada estudiante en cada clase. Hemos creado coreografía colaborativa en Ballet para Niños, corregido la técnica de nuestros estudiantes a través de conversaciones en video, compartido letras de canciones en português en nuestra pizarra virtual para Música de Capoeira, y sobre todo disfrutado de bailar, mover, cantar y estar juntos.
 
Seguimos enseñando el mismo programa de estudios que ofrecimos en nuestro estudio (lo que se puede ver en nuestras descripciones de clases en www.FindYourCenterPasco.com/classes). Seguimos registrando el desarrollo de habilidades de cada estudiante a través del portal estudiantil en línea, preparando las presentaciones estudiantiles para el verano, y personalizando nuestra instrucción para cada estudiante y cada grupo.
 
Agradecemos a nuestros estudiantes y familias por su colaboración en esta transición. Mantener nuestro horario regular de clases nos ha permitido a nosotros y a nuestros estudiantes a encontrar estabilidad en nuestras vidas cotidianas durante tiempos de mucha inseguridad. Cada día anticipamos la hora en que podemos ver y trabajar con nuestros estudiantes, y esperamos seguir viéndoles por muchos días que vienen.
​

Mientras la circunstancias actuales han necesitado que algunas familias salieran de nuestra escuela hasta poder reunirnos nuevamente cara a cara, también hemos podido dar la bienvenida a nuevos estudiantes en nuestro salón virtual.
 
Nuestras inscripciones siempre son mes a mes y abiertas durante todo el año. Estudiantes nuevos se pueden juntar en cualquier momento inscribiéndose en el sitio web www.FindYourCenterPasco.com.
 
Esperamos que esto sea una oportunidad para reconectar con antiguos estudiantes que ya no viven en el área Tri-Cities, con seguidores de Find Your Center que viven lejos, y con cualquiera que no haya podido juntarse a nuestras clases en persona. Una vez que podamos volver a tener las clases regulares en nuestro estudio, nos comunicaremos con los alumnos de distancia para retirarse de las clases, o para seguir enseñándoles a través de secciones en línea.
 
Nuestras descripciones de clases, horarios y precios se pueden encontrar en www.FindYourCenterPasco.com/classes.
 

​Tenemos varios talleres y presentaciones programadas para este verano y otoño. Manténte al tanto para las fechas y detalles. Esperamos tener a todos de vuelta en nuestro estudio para la Presentación Estudiantil de Verano en junio. Siempre hemos hecho presentaciones simples, así que mientras podamos juntarnos, ¡el espectáculo seguirá!
 
Por mientras, necesitamos seguir pagando la renta para poder tener un estudio a donde podremos volver. Hemos estado abiertos por poco más de dos años, y dependemos de los pagos mensuales de los estudiantes para sostener nuestra escuela. Tenemos una próspera comunidad de estudiantes que se han juntado para seguir aprendiendo y entrenando en línea, y esperamos que juntos podremos superar esta situación y regresar a nuestro estudio antes de que pase mucho tiempo.
 

Sin importar si te juntes o no a las clases de Find Your Center, recomendamos que tomes un poco de tiempo cada día para centrarte entre medio de los cambios diarios y la inseguridad que todos estamos experimentando. Haz ejercicio, medita, crea arte—haz lo que tú necesitas para poder enfocar en tu propio bienestar.
 
Find Your Center ofrece recursos gratis en línea a través de nuestro canal de YouTube  (Find Your Center - Pasco, WA on YouTube), página de Facebook (facebook.com/FindYourCenterPasco) y blog (www.FindYourCenterPasco.com/blog). Puedes utilizar estos recursos para entrenar solo, mirar espectáculos inspiradoras, leer sobre la historia y las teorías de aprendizaje, encontrar recursos recomendados para la meditación, libros empoderadores para niños y más.
 
También recomendamos que tomes un poco de tiempo sin pantallas y conexiones virtuales para estar presente contigo mismo y con los que viven en tu casa. Para poder estar presente en nuestras comunidades, nuestras naciones y nuestro mundo, es necesario mantenernos centrados y sanos.
 
Entre medio de las luchas existen grandes oportunidades—de surgir como una sociedad más unida y compasiva; disfrutar de la compañia de las personas con las que vivimos; reconectar con los amigos cercas y lejanos. Hasta las oportunidades más cotidianas—de encontrar maneras de seguir bailando y jugando capoeira en los espacios pequeños de nuestras casas—pueden ser justo lo que necesitamos para poder tomar un descanso, centrarnos y resurgir listos para dirigirnos a los desafíos sin precedente que todos estamos enfrentando juntos en este momento.

By Kate Feinberg Robins

Find Your Center transitioned smoothly from in-person to online classes as soon as Governor Inslee announced statewide school closures on March 13. By Monday, March 16 we were holding all of our classes at their regularly scheduled times, connecting with students virtually from our newly set-up home studio. From the beginning we've had a secure virtual classroom, monitoring our door so that only enrolled students can enter. We have never shared photos or videos of other people's houses and will not do so without explicit permission.
 
Over the past two weeks, we have delivered the same high quality, small group instruction through our online meetings that students have come to expect from us. While we can't offer our spacious studio, sprung marley floor, ballet barres and kick bag, we have been taking advantage of the opportunity to teach students how to practice in their own spaces at home. 
 
Our classes continue to be interactive, responding and adapting to the needs of each student in each class. We've created collaborative choreography in Children's Ballet, corrected students' technique through video chat, shared Portuguese lyrics on our virtual white board for Capoeira Music, and overall enjoyed dancing, moving, singing, and being together. 
 
We're continuing to teach the same curricula that we offered in our studio (outlined in our class descriptions at www.FindYourCenterPasco.com/classes). We continue to track students' skill development through our online student portal, to prepare for summer presentations, and to personalize our instruction for each individual student and each group meeting.
 
We would like to thank our students and families for helping to make this transition smooth. Maintaining our regular class schedule has enabled us and our students to find stability in our daily lives during uncertain times. Each day, we look forward to seeing and working with our students, and we hope to continue for many days to come!
​

While the current circumstances have led some families to withdraw until we are able to meet again in person, we have also been happy to welcome new students into our virtual classroom.
 
Our enrollment is always month to month and open year-round. New students can join at any time by signing up at www.FindYourCenterPasco.com. 
 
We hope this will be an opportunity to reconnect with past students who no longer live in the Tri-Cities area, with Find Your Center fans who live far away, and with anyone who has been unable to join our classes in person. Once we are able to move regular classes back into our studio, we'll touch base with our distance learners to either unenroll or continue teaching online-only sections of some of our classes.
 
Class descriptions, schedules, and tuition rates can be found at www.FindYourCenterPasco.com/classes. 
 

We have several workshops and presentations planned for this summer and fall. Stay tuned for dates and details. We hope to have everyone back in the studio for our Summer Student Performance in June. We have always kept our student performances simple, so as long as we are able to get together, the show will go on! 
 
In the meantime, we do need to continue paying rent in order to have a studio to go back to. We have been in business for just over two years now, and we count on monthly tuition payments for our school to be self-supporting. We have a thriving community of students who have come together to continue learning and training online, and we hope that together we'll get through this and return to our studio before too long.
 

​Whether or not you join Find Your Center classes, we urge you to take some time each day to center yourself in the midst of the daily changes and uncertainty that we are all experiencing. Exercise, meditate, create art—do what you need to do to focus on your own wellness. 
 
Find Your Center offers free online resources through our YouTube channel (Find Your Center - Pasco, WA on YouTube), Facebook page (facebook.com/FindYourCenterPasco), and blog (www.FindYourCenterPasco.com/blog). You can use these to train on your own, watch inspirational performances, read about history and learning, find recommended resources for meditation, empowering children's books, and more.
 
We also encourage you to take time away from screens and virtual connections to be present with yourself and those in your household. In order to be there for our communities, our nation(s), and our world, we need to keep ourselves centered and healthy. 
 
In the midst of struggle there are great opportunities— to emerge as a more unified and compassionate society; to enjoy the company of the people we live with; to reconnect with friends near and far. Even the most mundane opportunities—to find ways to keep dancing and playing capoeira in our own small spaces at home—can be just what we need to be able to take a break, center ourselves, and re-emerge ready to address the unprecedented challenges that we are all facing together.

By Kate Feinberg Robins
 
My beginning adult ballet students often ask what they should practice at home. One challenge in practicing ballet is that there is so much, it’s hard to know where to start when you don’t have a teacher to guide you. Every class I teach is different, because an important part of dance training is putting steps together in different ways. This is why even professional ballet dancers take company classes, where the company’s ballet master or ballet mistress gives practice exercises. 

A company class at the Royal Ballet

Once you’ve been studying ballet for a few years, or even a few months, you’ll start to understand the patterns of ballet exercises, which we call “combinations.” At that point, it will be easier to make your own exercises to practice at home. But if you’ve just begun and everything is new, then where do you start? Or maybe you understand how to create a combination, but you just want to focus on doing it, without the extra complication of also putting it together. You just want a simple way to practice at home between classes, without putting too much thought into it. So where do you begin?
 
These three ballet barre videos offer good practice routines for beginning adult students.

I chose them for 3 reasons:

• Each shows an adult demonstrating barre exercises with correct technique. There are plenty of videos showing children doing beginning exercises. Beginning children rarely dance with technical precision and correct alignment, and sometimes adults just feel silly following along with a children’s class.
• These barres stick to beginner steps and simple combinations. Many videos that are labeled “beginner” put steps together in more complicated ways that are confusing for students still trying to learn the basics.
• These videos keep you moving, keep your muscles warm, and get you through a complete barre. If you’ve already learned the steps in class, then what you need between classes is to practice, not to overwhelm yourself with more explanation. 

​How to use these videos when you practice at home:

1. Use them between classes, not instead of class. These videos give beginning exercises with very little explanation. Use them to practice steps you’ve learned with your teacher in class.
2. Warm up first. If you take class with me, you know our floor exercises. Always do a few of these to find the right muscles and alignment before standing at the barre. At the very least, do a few crunches. If you don’t warm up, find, and engage the right muscles before starting barre, you can easily hurt yourself. It also just feels better.
3. Find a barre. A chair, sofa, table, or ledge can work. It should be above your waist and below your shoulders. Place your hand gently on your “barre” with the elbow in front of the shoulder. Readjust your arm position on the barre as you move, so that the elbow is always in front of the shoulder.
4. Skip the steps you don’t know. It’s best to practice what you’ve learned between classes and to learn new steps in class with instructor guidance.
5. Simplify the combination. Sometimes you might recognize the steps but feel overwhelmed by the way they're put together. If this happens, try simplifying. You can face the barre with 2 hands holding it, so you don't have to worry about arms. Or keep 1 hand on the barre and the other arm in 2nd position. If the exercise involves turning, face straight forward instead. If the pattern of steps is confusing, just keep repeating the same step.
6. Do each combination once looking at the video and once without looking. You have to look to learn the exercise, but you can’t fully focus on how you’re doing the steps until you memorize the exercise and focus on yourself.
7. Always start at the beginning and continue in sequence. The sequence of a ballet class has been carefully developed over generations of teaching and training so that the earlier exercises prepare you to do the later ones. Even if you don’t get through the whole barre, start at the beginning every time.

​And most importantly, have fun!

By Kate Feinberg Robins

Lazy Dancer Tips is one of the most thorough and well produced Youtube channels demonstrating how to use ballet exercises for general fitness. Here is my list of pros and cons:
 
Pros

• Alessia is a beautiful dancer and a joy to watch. She is a professional performer and conveys a down-to-earth and fun personality.
• She speaks to the lay person, offering practical exercises and tips useful for anyone, not just dancers.
• She offers specific advice and exercises for ballet students of all levels, ranging from sewing pointe shoes to improving jump techniques.
• Whether you’re looking for general fitness or specific ballet tips, you can easily find them here. The playlists are well organized in practical categories, including:
  • cardio workouts,
  • stretching,
  • foot & ankle strengthening,
  • abs,
  • back,
  • arms,
  • posture, and more.
• The videos are well produced with great sound, lighting, and graphics.
• There are so many different videos that you can easily do a different routine every day to keep things exciting. So far I haven't been disappointed by any of the videos I've tried out!

 Cons

• Because she is a professional ballet dancer, Alessia doesn’t move like the average person, which might make it hard for the average person to look at her videos and see themselves doing it.
• While Alessia does a great job of talking through each exercise, her quick explanations are not thorough enough for a beginner to really understand how to do them correctly. This is why real live lessons with a teacher are so important. If you're following along with movements that are unfamiliar to you, be careful not to hurt yourself. Especially if you have injuries, skip the unfamiliar movements and ask a teacher to guide you in how to do them correctly.

​Overall, the pros far outweigh the cons, so I encourage you to take a look at these videos and add them to your fitness routine.

By Kate Feinberg Robins

As an adult ballet dancer, I am continually working to find that balance between correct technique and the joy of dancing. I’m always worried about protecting my lower back. Like many dancers, I spent years training to bend in all different directions, without always doing it correctly. As I got older, the flexibility stuck, but the strength to hold my posture in alignment did not.
 
Then there was pregnancy with its joint-loosening hormones, all the extra weight my body had never carried before, and my pelvic floor and ab muscles moving into new positions. Nearly two years after childbirth, it’s still a constant struggle to keep my knees, ankles, feet, and pelvis all safely warmed up and in safely aligned positions.
 
But the secret of ballet is that correct technique is what allows you to find a place of calm strength where you can confidently center yourself, feel the music, and let the joy of dancing move you.
 
Ballet technique is incredibly complicated. If studying ballet is new to you, or if you've never trained at a professional studio, this might come as a surprise. If you have been training for a while, you're probably painfully aware of how hard it is to simultaneously do the million and one things that make the most basic of steps look both correct and easy.
 
On his website A Ballet Education (aballeteducation.com), former professional dancer and ballet teacher David JoongWon King has written a series of blog posts with detailed notes and drawings explaining how to perform ballet steps correctly. He covers basics like second position and tendu devant, as well as more complex steps like pirouettes and attitude derrière.

For beginning students, these "Notes" on ballet technique will feel overwhelming and abstract. I encourage you to take a quick look anyway, for these reasons:

1. His drawings are excellent examples of how the steps you're learning should ideally look. Real life examples are rarely this perfect.
2. If you're unsure about a detail of a step you've learned, you will likely find your answer here. The site provides the most thorough explanations of ballet steps that I have ever seen.
3. It's a great reminder of how hard ballet is! Don't expect yourself to get everything right the first time you learn it. The A Ballet Education blog is written for advanced dancers, and they still have a lot to learn.

 
When we look at all A Ballet Education’s drawings of perfectly proportioned people performing ballet steps with perfect technique, it’s easy to lose sight of the joy of dancing. But hidden within this complexity are basic principles of alignment that can keep you dancing safely and confidently through all kinds of challenges.
 
Sometimes to rekindle that joy, we need to pause, re-center ourselves physically, become one with the music, and just dance.

By Kate Feinberg Robins
 
Mikhail Baryshnikov is widely considered to be the greatest male ballet dancer of all time. The strength and power of his dancing embody all of the reasons that ballet training can be such a powerful tool for athletes, artists, and all kinds of others.
 
If ever you thought that ballet was only for little girls, Baryshnikov’s performance in the 1985 movie White Nights will change your mind. If you want to see the whole movie, you can rent or buy it on YouTube. If you just want to see the most amazing dance scenes, you can watch them for free. Remember that it’s rated PG-13 and be prepared for some mature content. Here are my recommendations:
​

• For an awesome performance of stunning choreography (by Roland Petit), watch the opening scene where Baryshnikov dances “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort,” or “The Young Man and Death.” Full 9 minutes on Vimeo or a 4 ½ minute excerpt on Youtube.

• For some impressive athleticism and impeccable artistry, check out Baryshnikov and tap dancer Gregory Hines dueling it out in an impromptu warm-up and dance. A little background on this second scene—there’s a man watching them on the security camera while they dance. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out why.

• ​Finally, in this 2-minute scene, Baryshnikov shows off his virtuoso skills, pulling off 11 pirouettes as if he were walking down the street.  

​If you know a little girl who finds inspiration in pink tutus, good ballet training will teach her to channel that excitement into power and strength. If pink tutus aren’t your thing, check out Baryshnikov. You won’t be disappointed.

By Kate Feinberg Robins

​My rediscovery of ballet after retiring from a pre-professional performance career at age 18 has been gradual, to say the least.
 
During my last couple years of high school, I was dancing lead roles with the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet and preparing to audition for professional companies, or to continue my training at professional schools if I wasn’t yet good enough to be hired. At 5’ 1”, good enough to be hired meant good enough to be a soloist. No one would hire a dancer my height for the corps.
 
I auditioned for American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, and unsurprisingly, didn’t make it. I made the second cut at Julliard, but didn’t quite get in. I finished high school prepared to enter Butler University’s ballet program on a merit scholarship. There I would stay, perfecting my skills until I could finally get paid to do what I loved—or so I thought.
 
But during that summer between high school and college, I discovered that I no longer loved it enough to give up everything else. I wanted to reach beyond the walls of the dance studios and theatres, to do all those things I had always had to say no to. I wanted to study philosophy and travel the world.
 
It would be another ten years before I could enjoy a ballet class again. I was afraid to set foot in a studio and see how terrible my dancing had surely become. I was embarrassed to be seen at less than my prime. I feared that a ballet class would only bring frustration over what I could no longer do.
 
In the years after I stopped performing, I was occasionally asked to teach ballet—first to young gymnasts in Indiana, and later to professional flamenco dancers and amateur folk dancers in Chile. Eventually, I began seeking out opportunities to work with students who didn’t see ballet as a serious career option, but enjoyed and appreciated it alongside their main interests and pursuits.
 
I taught middle and high school students who cared more about orchestra, drama, academics, and athletics than ballet. I taught children who were enjoying their childhoods. I taught adults who were finishing their PhDs, building their careers, and raising their children. Through these students, I rediscovered my own love for ballet and discovered that it could be part of my life—and so many other people’s lives—without giving up everything else.
 
Ballet study as a casual pursuit has traditionally not been taken seriously by professionals. No one likes to see their profession cheapened by amateurs claiming to know it all. Yet, like with all fields, I think there is a happy medium. Students with a passing interest in a subject can learn from professionals with the awareness that their growing knowledge and skills will only ever scratch the surface.
 
Ballet study has a great deal to offer to adults and children of all ages with all kinds of goals and interests. The website balletforadults.com, while aimed primarily at adults, offers practical tips for any casual student who is serious about doing their best in ballet class, even if their best will never be good enough for a professional career.
 
What I like most about this site is that it clearly explains things that tend to be taken for granted in ballet classrooms. When young people train intensively, they are socialized into the norms of ballet study. For casual students who take the occasional class or start learning later in life, this socialization doesn’t happen. They enter the studio unaware of where they should stand, what they should wear, or how they should address the teacher. Balletforadults.com breaks down these norms, kind of like a guide book for tourists who don’t expect to pass for natives, but do hope to get by and enjoy themselves.
 
This website is also a great example of the kind of high quality work that can be accomplished when professionals from a variety of fields put their energy into promoting ballet. The blog’s creators are graphic designers, photographers, writers, and teachers. Their skills in all of these areas shine through in a beautifully presented and accessible blog.
 
My main critique of the site is that despite its posts encouraging all kinds of people to study ballet, the photographs portray almost exclusively slender young women. If you don’t see yourself on this site, don’t be deterred. Just take it as a useful source of information, so that you can go into your next ballet class a little better informed.