By Kate Feinberg Robins
Una Transición Suave
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. Bienvenidos a Nuevos Alumnos Cercas y Lejanos
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. Mirando Hacia Adelante
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. Manteniéndonos Centrados
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.
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By Kate Feinberg Robins
A Smooth Transition
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! Welcoming New Students Near and Far
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. Looking Forward
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. Staying Centered
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, Ph.D.
At Find Your Center, our teaching is informed by research on learning and movement, as well as our many years of intensive training in the arts that we teach. For the next several blog posts, I'm putting on my cultural anthropologist hat to look at some of the research that helps us understand learning, movement, and the history of capoeira.
This post looks at anthropologist Greg Downey's 2014 lecture "Dance of the Disorderly: Capoeira, Gang Warfare & How History Gets in the Brain," presented at the Latin American Studies Center of University of Maryland, December 4, 2014. Quotes are from 41:00-45:00. Video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJXc6yMXBnM.
Ballet dancers balancing in improbable positions
The first time I saw a capoeira game was in the summer of 2000 in northeast Brazil. As a ballet dancer who could accomplish amazing feats that most people don’t imagine possible, I had never seen anything like this—people who were as agile & powerful on their hands and heads as my ballet colleagues and I were on our feet. They could balance in improbable positions, moving from one to the next with total control.
Anthropologist Greg Downey describes the capoeira headstand or bananeira na cabeça as:
...a dynamic movement. It's not a static position like you do in yoga. You move around in it. You jump into it.... While yoga and gymnastics involve various types of headstands, in capoeira training practitioners are asked to jump into headstands, ...place the head on the ground and then pivot around it, ...spin on your head, ...slide on your head.... 
The Bananeira movement is named after banana trees, with the hands and head rooted to the ground while the legs and feet move freely like leaves
Downey describes one particular headstand that epitomizes the improbable positions of capoeira: [Mestre Valmir] was doing a headstand where the weight was sort of resting just above his ear, his head was sort of flopped over on one shoulder, he was vertical, and he picked his arms up... and I couldn't imagine how his spine just didn't pop out the back of his body. It just looked like it would break your neck.
In contemporary US society we think of the neck as fragile:
When I first saw [bananeira na cabeça] I sort of saw it through the eyes of my mother, and the first thing I said was, "Oh, my God, you're gonna break your neck." ...That was what I assumed. Your neck is fragile, and if you put your head on the ground, you're gonna break your neck.
Downey goes on to describe the process of un-learning the culturally conditioned reflex to protect our heads & necks in order to train the capoeira headstand:
When students are first asked to train in this, they're given minimal instruction. They're just told, "Do it. Vamos. Vamos embora. We're gonna do it. Let's go." And so you do it, and new people are always in the back of the room, and you start hearing the "thunk," you know, the head on the ground. And nobody even pays attention when you first do it, unless you really hear a loud "thunk." And then you only turn around to laugh, because you know it's part of the training. 
In many parts of the world today, the head is used as a 5th limb in everyday life
Downey argues that when capoeira students learn to use the head as a fifth limb, they are embodying the very history of capoeira. In 19th century Brazil, like in many parts of the world today, the head was used to carry things. Old photos show Mestre Bimba carrying sacks of concrete on his head and Brazilian porters carrying pianos on their heads. In training bananeira na cabeça, we can come to imagine ways of life different from our own, where things that we assumed were impossible or dangerous are a normal part of everyday life. At Find Your Center, we value the rich history of capoeira and the power of capoeira movements, music, and songs to teach our students about different ways of living and being. We invite you to explore capoeira's rich history and culture--and maybe try some headstands of your own--through our music and movement classes for all ages.
By Kate Feinberg Robins, Ph.D.
At Find Your Center, our teaching is informed by research on learning and movement, as well as our many years of intensive training in the arts that we teach. For the next several blog posts, I'm putting on my cultural anthropologist hat to look at some of the research that helps us understand learning, movement, and the history of capoeira. 
"Order and Progress" on the Brazilian flag
Is it a game? A dance? A ritual? A fight?
Capoeira is meant to trick and deceive by being all of these at once. The untrained eye viewing capoeira often wonders, Who won? Yet the trained practitioner knows the subtle movements that may be just a game today, but would be deadly if the need arose. Anthropologist Greg Downey explains the history of this deceptive martial art: The perceived "disorderly appearance of capoeira has roots in 19th century Brazil, when it was associated with urban gangs called capoeiras and desordeiros or ‘disorderlies,’ [who were] alternately turned to as political enforcers and turned upon and persecuted as a target of moral panic.... Even though capoeira is now legal and openly practiced, even endorsed by the state, many practitioners seek to maintain the sense that they are practicing ‘disorder.’
Disorder and Progress? In a nation whose flag touts “Order and Progress,” how did such a “disorderly” art come to be respected cultural heritage? Capoeira at its core is full of contradiction and deception, and it is precisely because of this that it has endured. It is a powerful testament to the enslaved Afro-Brazilians who created capoeira that it continues to spread across nations and social classes over a century after its creation.
This post looks at anthropologist Greg Downey's 2014 lecture "Dance of the Disorderly: Capoeira, Gang Warfare & How History Gets in the Brain," presented at the Latin American Studies Center of University of Maryland, December 4, 2014.
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