Dance Art-I-Techts - helps K - 12 school and home schooling educators integrate dance into the core curriculum to supplement other classroom and physical education activities. We show step-by-step how to choreograph (ie, building dances), as well as how to teach students to choreograph

This just in: Helene has just learned that she is to be this year's recipient of the prestigious "Meritorious Service Award" from the Rhode Island Alliance of Health Physical Education, Recreation and Dance for 2005.

Helene Scheff has been a dance educator and administrator for 45 years in both the public and private sectors. A Registered Dance Educator (R.D.E.), she has served as a choreographer with non-dancers in community theater, children's theater, high school theater, flag squads, summer camps, and college theater. She is the founder and executive director of Chance to Dance© (an in-school dance program started in 1985 that brings quality dance education to children in grades four through eight). She is co-author of four books: Building Dances (1995), Building More Dances (2001), Dance About Anything (Human Kinetics, 2004 - in press), and Experiencing and Appreciating Dance (Human Kinetics, 2004 - in press).

A graduate of the famed NYC High School of Performing Arts, Helene has trained in New York, Chicago, and California. She is a former Joffrey Ballet dancer and has taught and choreographed for the University of Kansas, University of Massachussetts at Amherst, and Rhode Island College. She has served as vice president of dance and conference coordinator for RIAHPERD, vice president of dance for EDA, and treasurer for the Rhode Island Alliance for Arts in Education. She is a founding member and former president of the Dance Alliance of Rhode Island, and currently serves as Secretary for the Alliance for Arts Education.

Helene was named RIAHPERD's Dance Teacher of the Year in 1994 and was honored as an EDA Outstanding Professional in 1996. She received the RIAHPERD President's Honor Award in 1997 and an NDA Presidential Citation in 1999. She lives in NorthKingstown, Rhode Island, with her husband Edward. In her free time she enjoys entertaining her grandchildren, attending musicals, and traveling.