Meet the Instructor

My Story
Movement has always been part of my life.

From the time I was a little girl, I was drawn to dance, athletics, and simply being in motion. That early love eventually led me to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Education, followed by a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Dance in Education.

For more than three decades, movement and teaching have woven their way through my life. I have taught ballet and modern dance, Pilates and yoga, worked with students at the college level, and spent 25 years as a public-school educator.

The settings changed. The ages changed. I changed.

But teaching remained.

In 2018, after 37 years of freelancing, I fulfilled a longtime dream and opened Gallery Barre on Main Street in Hackettstown. I finally had a space of my own—a place where I could bring together so many of the things I had spent my life learning and teaching.

Just after the studio’s first anniversary, life changed in a way I never could have anticipated.

I was diagnosed with Stage 3C ovarian cancer.

Movement, which had always been such a natural part of my life, suddenly became something different.

There were days for strength and days for stillness. Days when I recognized my body and days when I had to become acquainted with it all over again. I began to understand movement not simply as something we do, but as a way of listening—to our bodies, to our breath, and to what we may need in a particular season of life.

I am deeply grateful to now be in remission.

And although I would never have chosen that chapter of my story, it changed the way I understand the work I have been doing all along.

Today, Gallery Barre lives in a quieter, more intimate space—my home studio in Hackettstown.

Here, I continue to teach the way I have always loved to teach: personally, thoughtfully, and with curiosity. Through Barre, Pilates, stretching, and restorative movement, I meet people where they are and invite them to explore what their bodies can do.

I don’t believe movement has to look a certain way.

Bodies change. Lives change. We change.

And perhaps the practice is not about trying to stay the same, but learning how to keep moving with ourselves as we do.

Gallery Barre has changed with me.

It is smaller now. More personal. A little quieter.

And, in many ways, closer to what I believe movement was always meant to be.

Move. Breathe. Nourish. Restore.

— Robin Florentine
Owner & Instructor, Gallery Barre
BFA Dance Education | MA Education