Our Story
Kate and DeShawn began Find Your Center with a vision: a school where we would make ballet and capoeira accessible, and teach these arts as tools for centering ourselves in our everyday lives.
When we met in 2013, the more we got to know each other, the more we recognized in each other the powerful skills for physical, emotional, and intellectual centering that we had developed through our previous professional training in dance and martial arts. We brought with us the wider perspectives of having worked in social science research, local government, teaching, and community organizing.
Five years later and with a two-year-old in tow, we opened the doors of our school. Our students ranged from Spanish-speaking families thrilled to have an affordable and accessible ballet school in their neighborhood, to young professionals, retired dance teachers, and health-conscious people from surrounding areas.
When the coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020, we moved out of our studio and into virtual classrooms. Throughout that year, we were able to offer some semblance of stability, normality, and social contact by being there for our students at the same times every week, through wildfires, pandemic surges, and social and political unrest.
By 2021, our youngest students had “Zoomed out” as they dealt with a year of virtual schooling, and we had zoomed in on teaching adults, which had always been our passion and our strength. As we move forward with this new vision and also return to our original vision of teaching holistic wellness through arts, we invite you to explore our virtual space and join us on the journey.
Our Mission
Our mission is to help you find your center through the holistic practice of ballet, Pilates, and capoeira.
To Find Your Center is
To find balance and calm.
To find confidence and power.
To control your center of gravity.
To move with efficiency and strength.
To know and honor yourself.
To respect those around you.
Our Team
Kate Feinberg Robins
Kate began her ballet training as a young child. She performed with the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet (now Ballet Excel Ohio) from 1993-2000, dancing lead roles in ballets by Frances Patrelle and Michael Vernon. In her childhood and teenage years, she trained ballet with Nan Klinger in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. She also studied dance in summer intensives at School of American Ballet, Chautauqua Institution, North Carolina School of the Arts, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Richmond Ballet, BalletMet, Ballet Hispánico, and Ballet Cristina Helena. As a young adult, Kate studied flamenco with Aileen Passloff at Bard College, and Pedro Fernández at Academia Embrujo in Chile.
Kate has been teaching ballet since 2000. Her first students included professional flamenco dancers, young folk dancers, and gymnasts in Chile and the United States. She taught the Royal Academy of Dance curriculum for three years before founding Find Your Center. She currently teaches at Looking Glass Studio for the Performing Arts in Redlands, California.
Kate writes Find Your Center’s blog and website, and teaches in both Spanish and English. She is an aspiring fiction writer, and has a PhD in Linguistic Anthropology.
DeShawn “Quiabo” Robins
DeShawn is Find Your Center’s co-founder and capoeira instructor. He is a Geographic Information Systems specialist, a runner, musician, and health and fitness enthusiast.
Quiabo, as he is known in the capoeira world, has been teaching and training at capoeira academies since the 1990s. He began his training with Gary “Trovoada” Williams in Detroit, Michigan, and later trained and taught under Denis Chiaramonte in Champaign, Illinois. He’s given guest classes at capoeira events throughout the Midwest, and choreographed the capoeira section of Millicent Johnnie’s The Hip Hop Project for the University of Illinois Dance Department in 2009. He approaches capoeira holistically, exploring how we can apply capoeira skills to our lives and apply our life experiences to capoeira training, in order to better ourselves in all aspects.
DeShawn speaks French and Portuguese.
Ahanu Scott Robins
Ahanu is an avid reader, loves parkour, and speaks Spanish and English. When he’s not studying or playing computer games, he produces music for Find Your Center videos.
Let’s work together.
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch!