PROFESSOR SABIÁ • CAPOEIRA LUANDA

“As a former middle school teacher, lifelong arts educator and learner, deeply committed to leaving this world better than we found it. I believe people make the difference, and this is at the heart of all I do.”

Known as Sabiá to most friends, family and the capoeira community, Fabiano Pinheiro was born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil and received his capoeira apelido at the tender age of 9. Sabiá started his martial arts journey training under the supervision of Mestre Jelon Vieira with Grupo Capoeira Brasil in Salvador. Sabiá received his Professor rank in 2012.

Immigrating to the New York City in 2003, Professor Sabiá has uses capoeira as a vehicle to enrich the lives of youth practitioners across the 5 boroughs of New York City and currently in the Bay Area of California. As one of the founding team members of the KIPP AMP Capoeira program Professor Sabiá and Pantera (Nicole Smith) were the first to implement a fully inclusive Capoeira fitness and arts program into the Kipp charter schools system. The KIPP AMP Capoeira program has serviced 500 students in batizados and changing of cord ceremonies. Professor Sabiá was the full-time founding Capoeira Physical Education teacher for 7 years working with ages 9-15 years old until the spring of 2011. 

Leaving Kipp Amp to take a position at the prestigious New York University at Tisch School of the Arts, Professor Sabiá was integral to the support and develop their integrated capoeira programming. The capoeira program at NYU continues to be the first Drama & Theater program to mandate capoeira into their curriculum stating that the art form is an integral tool for students to understand movement acquisition, balance, coordination and improvisation. Professor Sabiá worked at NYU from fall 2011 until Spring 2014.

Professor Sabiá has also worked in commercials, folkloric events and performances that promote the art of capoeira; television commercials for Subway Sandwiches, Orbitz Gum, America’s Got Talent, NY Film Academy documentary Film “The Evolution of the Art of Capoeira in the World,” National Endowment for the Arts Folk Festivals in Lowell Massachusetts and Richmond Virginia, music video “Slave to the Beat” by Cid the Kid, photo shoot layout for X magazine with Ricky Martin, Global Passport Charity Performance with the United Nations in Bermuda, Virgin Islands, participation with second DanceBrazil company performance at Fall for Dance at the City Center of New York, and the Sun Flower Children Russell Simmons charity event performance to name a few.

Currently Professor Sabiá teaches quarterly adult classes in New York City and the surrounding boroughs at the Flushing Town Hall in Queens and PMT Dance Studio in Manhattan; all capoeira class sites are for all ages. Since his recent move (fall 2014) to the Bay Area, Professor Sabiá has started an adults class at Destiny Arts in Oakland and LCCT in Concord, California and is working in a handful of Oakland Unified Schools. He is a founder teacher at One Purpose School located in the Bayview of San Francisco also the Co-director of Get Empowered program. 

Professor Sabiá also collaborates with the Capoeira Foundation and The Capoeira Center of New York by helping support grant work that fosters the development and maintenance of capoeira art across the United States.