"The research is pretty clear that those students who are involved in arts education and music perform better on standardized tests. So here’s a little secret: If you want to improve your standardized test performance, provide more arts and music education."
– U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige

Footworks is a leader in the field of Arts-In-Education and has been dedicated to youth and family audiences since the inception of the Company.

ASSEMBLY PROGRAM
Keeping the Beat: Contemporary American Traditional Dance
Footworks presents live music and authentic American traditional dance in an energetic, engaging performance with plenty of audience participation. Footworks has an exceptional ability to convey the joy of dance to every student while illuminating the historical and multicultural perspectives of different American percussive dances. For over twenty eight years, Footworks has specialized in performing and teaching the music and dance that developed up and down the East Coast and across the continent form origins in African-American, Celtic, and Native American cultural traditions still found in Southern Appalachia. Footworks presents live fiddle music, American clogging and hambone along with call-and-answer songs, rhythms, and other related dances such as French Canadian stepdance and South African bootdance. [A wooden performing surface is preferred if available]
Grade Level: K-5, 6-8, 9-12
Curriculum Connectors: Multi-Cultural, History/Social Studies, Music, Dance, and Physical Education

PROGRAM PLUS WORKSHOP
Follow the assembly program “Keeping the Beat” with up to four 45-minute workshops, giving classes a chance to try out the dance steps they've just seen. Classes will work with Footworks dancers on age-appropriate dance steps. This is a wonderful activity for P.E. or dance classes. (2 artists)
Grade Level: K-12
Curriculum Connectors: Multi-Cultural, History/Social Studies, Music, Dance, and Physical Education

RESIDENCY PROGRAM
Roots and Rhythm
Traditional music and dance is an activity that Footworks presents in a way that makes participation accessible and fun with an approach that brings students together in a positive, constructive, and participatory way, building community and connecting the participants to each other and to their culture. The learning sequences develop motor skills and communication skills, teaching how to focus, follow directions, and work with others. Every individual understands that they are an important part of the whole. Workshops include percussive dance, singing, “hamboning” and improvisational exercises. (2-3 artists)
Grade Level: K-12
Curriculum Connectors: Multi-Cultural, History/Social Studies, Music, Dance, and Physical Education

ARTS INTEGRATION
Footworks’ founding director Eileen Carson Schatz is a 2007 participant in the Maryland State Arts Council’s Teaching Artist Institute and is now a Certified Teaching Artist:

Exploring Cultural Diversity Through Traditional Dance An Arts Integrated Residency Focused on Social Studies
About The Artist: Eileen Carson Schatz, Founding Director of Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, has toured internationally, including guest choreographer and performer in Riverdance in London and with the Smithsonian Institute in Japan. She has received an NEA Choreography Fellowship, an MSAC Individual Artist Award, an Annie Award from the Arts Council of AA County, and was selected Artist of the Year by Young Audiences of MD in 2006. She has performed and taught residencies in MD schools for almost 30 years and she is a recent graduate of the Teaching Artist Institute.	The Residency: This residency may be custom designed to address your program goals. A typical residency may be structured as follows and may be shorter or longer: • Workshops 1-3: Students learn fun and easy traditional dances from different cultures • Workshop 4: Students use improvisation to create their own dance • Workshop 5: Students review and assemble the dances they learned into a medley for presentation • Culminating Student Performance: Students share their dance with an audience
Educational Objectives & Standards From the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum Students will: • Understand the diversity and commonality, human interdependence, and global cooperation of the people of the US and the world through a multi-cultural and historic perspective • Develop the ability to recognize dance as an essential aspect of history and as an expression of human experience • Understand the multi-cultural nature of the US and how these cultures borrowed and shared traditions, resulting in new traditions. • Perform simple movement sequences with awareness of space
“The program was wonderful, one of our best ever!” -Owings Mills Elementary For bookings contact: Young Audiences of Maryland: www.yamd.org 410-837-7577