Find Your Center Wellness Arts

By Kate Feinberg Robins In a 2014 piece from NPR's Morning Edition , American Ballet Theatre dancer Misty Copeland discusses her children's book Firebird and how important it is to tell children, "You will succeed." Here are some highlights. On the challenges of women of color breaking into the field of professional ballet: I don't think that every African American or Latino or, you know, have the same body type, but yes, that's been one of the excuses, I think, saying that African Americans are too muscular or just aren't lean enough, and usually they say, "Oh, they have flat feet. So they don't have the flexibility that it takes to create the line in a pointe shoe." When people meet me in person they're usually surprised at how petite I am, because there's this idea that because I'm black I should look a certain way.... They hear those words from critics saying I'm too bulky, I'm too busty, and then they meet me in pers...

  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.  ​​ TIPS FOR ADDRESSING RACE & SOCIAL EQUITY WITH GRADE SCHOOL CHILDREN ​ 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 histor...

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.  Tips for Addressing Race & Diversity with Young Children 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 experie...

By Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD Not Enough 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 anthropolog...