American Flatfooting Combinations with Nic Gareiss
November 8 @ 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
Join us at the Floyd Event Center (188 EcoVillage Trail) on Sunday, November 8th, 2025 at 12:00 PM for a Flatfooting workshop with Nic Gareiss.
TICKETS: $35 ($30 for Step-A-Tune Camp Participants)
Workshop is 75 minutes in length, and designed for intermediate and advanced dancers with prior flatfoot experience.
Though flatfooting is usually a freestyle form, in this course for dancers already familiar with the walking step will learn choreographed repeatable combinations for old-time tunes drawing upon flatfooting technique. Instead of improvising, this workshop offers set sequences for the A and B (and sometimes C) parts of specific Appalachian melodies. Wear smooth-soled comfortable shoes with a low or no heel for this class designed for intermediate-advanced dancers ages 12+.
A minimum of 4 participants is required, so we encourage you to sign up in advance!
ABOUT NIC:
A child of the folk revival, Nic Gareiss (he/they) grew up attending folk festivals in the Midwest. At these events Nic learned Appalachian, Irish, English, and Canadian percussive dance surrounded by fiddlers, banjo-players, balladeers, and folksingers. This mix of movement, instrumental melodies, and traditional songs from rural places has become the heart of Nic’s creative work across the disciplines of dance, music, and contemporary performance.
One of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” Gareiss is widely recognized for his singular voice in the realm of dance and the traditional arts. Informed by 25 years of ethnographic study and performance, Gareiss’ work draws from many percussive dance practices to weave together a technique facilitating his love of improvisation; clog, flatfoot, and step dance vocabulary; and musical collaboration. He has concertized in seventeen countries with many of the luminaries of roots music and folk dance including Yasmin Williams, Alasdair Fraser, Natalie Haas, Bruce Molsky, The Chieftains, Colin Dunne, Darol Anger, The Gloaming, Ira Bernstein, Liz Carroll, Phil Wiggins, and Sandy Silva. Gareiss has performed at London’s Barbican Centre, the Irish National Concert Hall, the Munich Philharmonic, and Carnegie Hall. In addition to his two solo shows The Art of Treepling and Solo Square Dance, Nic collaborates in duo projects with Allison de Groot, Caleb Teicher, Cleek Schrey, Jake Blount, Laurel Premo, Maeve Gilchrist, Alexis Chartrand, Jack Devereux, Simon Chrisman, Ultan O’Brien, in a trio with Lissa Schneckenburger and Garrett Cameron, and as a member of the quartet This is How we Fly.