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STEP documents the senior year of a girls’ high-school step dance team against the background of inner-city Baltimore.
Director: Amanda Lipitz
Share this film! Give others a chance to enjoy this inspiring story!
Donate to the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, the charter school featured in STEP that helped 100% of its graduating class attend college.
Join a local step team or start your own! This helpful guide from Classroom will help you get one started at your own school.
Find a local chapter of Black Lives Matter and take action. Your support helps ensure every person of color has the social, economic, and political power to thrive.
Advocate to end hunger. Make sure your local policy makers support federal food assistance programs that ensure aid to hungry families in need. See Feeding America’s comprehensive list of programs for details.
“With every stomp, with every clap, with every beat, they were showing their hopes and their fears and their dreams. I knew that it was something special.”
Read the article on Huffington Post.
Researchers tracked hundreds of students in Baltimore to find out what top achievers had that others didn’t. Kids who found what researchers call an “identity project,” essentially a passion or hobby that helped motivate them (for example dancing), were more likely to go to college or decent jobs.
Read the article from The Atlantic.
An all-girls, college preparatory public charter school serving young women residing in Baltimore.
Visit the website of BLSYW.
Learn how to step from his YouTube playlist guide from Howcast.
Three members of the Lethal Ladies of BLSYW step team, from Baltimore, come into the KPCC studio to show off some of their moves. Their coach Gari “Coach G” McIntyre joins them and gives us a how-to on the basics of step.
Watch the Youtube video from KPCC.
“If we want to save Charm City, we must begin by reversing 100 years of segregation.”
Read the article on Slate.
I made it for the young women in it. And I always had that in mind because I just wanted them to have been proud to have been a part of it and glad that they trusted me with their stories. Because I felt it was a great privilege, I still believe it was a great privilege. Having anyone, besides the 19 young women that made it, see it and be moved by it, is just the most unbelievable thing.
Read the interview by Roger Ebert.
What’s happened to the three young women at the center of ‘Step’ since filming stopped in May 2016 with their graduation from the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women?
Find out on The Baltimore Sun.
"STEP is a film with all the gifts: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer."
Fionnaula Halligan, Screen Daily
"Heartening and unashamedly emotional, it's a certified crowd pleaser that doesn't care who knows it."
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"By documenting the collective efforts of getting these girls into college, Lipitz lands on the film's most enduring message: the necessity for education as a community effort."
Steve Greene, IndieWire
