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:
Our Commitment
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 duty 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. Teaching Race in the Dance Classroom
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. Using Dance to Teach and Discuss Race
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. 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. Lesson Plans for Teaching Race through Ballet and Capoeira
Stay tuned for more blog posts on how to bring race and social justice into your dance and capoeira classrooms in age-appropriate ways.
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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.
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. 
Developing healthy exercise habits in childhood is essential for preventing disease later in life. But for healthy habits to stick, they have to be culturally meaningful, socially viable, and supported by family and peers. For many children, capoeira is the perfect fit.
A 2013 study by Stanford University professor Kathryn Azevedo and colleagues found a Mexican folk dance program to be highly effective in increasing physical activity among low-income Latina girls. The cultural content led to increased parental involvement and “made cultural identity socially desirable.” Researchers found high rates of participation, improved social networks, and improved family cohesiveness. Most importantly, they succeeded in instilling healthy exercise habits in a population at high risk for childhood obesity. Capoeira plays a similar role in communities throughout the world, bringing people together in supportive social environments where they practice healthy habits together with family and peers. Capoeira’s cultural content also instills pride in Latina/o and African American children, reinforcing their motivation to stay active. If you have a child struggling to find the right sport to motivate healthy exercise habits, we invite you to give capoeira a try. From Bilingual Creative Movement classes for preschoolers to Teen/Adult Capoeira for older children, our curriculum at Find Your Center aims to instill cultural pride and physical and mental empowerment in children and adults of all ages.
This post looks at Azevedo and colleagues' 2013 article "Turn Off the TV and Dance! Participation in Culturally Tailored Health Interventions: Implications for Obesity Prevention among Mexican American Girls" in Ethnicity & Disease, 23(4), 452–461.
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. 
Don't those apples look delicious? I've always found that the more I eat fresh, healthy foods, the more I crave them. The same is true with exercise and meditation, and particularly with the highly technical and physically demanding arts of capoeira and ballet. Once you experience that sense of complete immersion in what you're doing, that feeling of challenging your body to do things you didn't think you could, and the realization that with focus, persistence, and solid guidance, you CAN do those seemingly impossible things--there's no going back.
What makes capoeira such a good fit for a healthy lifestyle? In their study of capoeira and aikido practitioners, Sports Scientist Dariusz Boguszewski and his team found that martial artists were significantly healthier than the average person. While many of the health-related behaviors they identified could be connected with any sport, they found 5 aspects of capoeira that make its practitioners particularly healthy:
They also found that even casual martial arts students led healthier lifestyles than non-martial artists:
At Find Your Center, we take a holistic approach to our martial arts and dance instruction. We value the process just as much as the outcome. As we guide you through the journey of developing your skills in capoeira, ballet, or flamenco, our primary goal is to help you become a healthier, more centered person. Join us to make capoeira part of your healthy lifestyle.
This post looks at Dariusz Boguszewski and colleagues’ 2014 article “The estimation of health-related behaviours of men practising aikido and capoeira” in Journal of Martial Arts Anthropology (14:2), pp. 41-46.
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'll put on my cultural anthropologist hat to look at some of the research that helps us understand learning, movement, and the history of capoeira. 
Macaco - The macaco or monkey is a complex acrobatic movement in capoeira.
This post looks at Greg Downey’s 2008 article “Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira: Physical Education and Enculturation in an Afro-Brazilian Art,” published in American Anthropologist 110:2, pp. 204-213.
Based on research with Mestre João Grande’s Capoeira academy in New York City, anthropologist Greg Downey identified 3 characteristics that set expert Capoeira teachers apart. João Grande spoke little English and his students spoke little Portuguese, yet his teaching was highly effective. How did he do it?
Downey found that Capoeira, like many other forms of physical education, is learned largely through imitation—and that effective learning through imitation requires not just an attentive student, but also an expert teacher. A good teacher facilitates imitation by:
In learning theory these techniques are called “scaffolding,” because the teacher provides extra support for novice students and gradually takes that support away until students can stand on their own (just like the scaffolds used for building construction).
In these videos from Capoeira Vibe, you can see Mestre Parente demonstrating these teaching techniques with the macacão (big monkey) movement. His use of scaffolding makes the Portuguese video easy to follow even if you don’t understand the language!
The teacher concludes the video by demonstrating the movement in context with a partner. In this final demonstration, the macacão is no longer part of a set sequence, no longer carefully positioned and slowed for the student to observe. At this point, the teacher has removed the scaffolding so that more advanced students can imitate freely and perform the movement in context on their own. Next time you come to class, notice how your capoeira and ballet teachers at Find Your Center place the movements we're teaching in a sequence. Notice how we position ourselves, our students, and the mirrors so that you can see from various angles. And notice how we break down each movement into its component parts. If you're confused about something, ask us: How would this movement be combined with others? Can I see it from a different angle? Can you slow it down? |