Jacqueline Smith School of Dance
925 Main Street East L9T 4H8 Milton, ON, Canada

You can sign up for additional classes! Have you signed up to learn New Zealand Hornpipe and Jig dances with Shelley. They are sooo fun!

Happy Tartan Day!

My wee angry washerwomen Practicing our Scottish version of the Irish Jig

JS Dancers - check this out. You can still sign up and attend classes with the other instructors

So proud of these two incredible young ladies. They both recently passed their SDTA Associate Teacher exam with Distinction (the highest result awarded) Way to go Elise and Katharine!

So excited to be a part of this Sdta event!

JS dancers: I have sent the link out to some already. If anyone else is interested let me know as I need to provide you with my SDTA number. Deadline is March 8th.- tomorrow

Thank you Milton for the nomination! Happy to be offering Highland Dance classes in Milton since 1998

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love this pic from the Sdta (ON) Milton Festival 2018. Samantha, Christina, Lennon. Mackenzie Great memory that popped up on my Facebook

Happy Robbie Burns Day! Dancers may not be performing anywhere today but we have wonderful memories of previous years to look back on and can look forward to 2022. Hope everyone is wearing tartan today

2021 may not be starting as we would like, being in lockdown, but hopefully as the year progresses it will become an amazing year!

We are now officially closed for the holidays. Merry Christmas! Hope everyone has a restful and enjoyable break. Classes resume January 5, 2021 ... Got into spirit to hand out this year’s tree ornament made by my Mum

Drumroll.... We have received many beautiful essays for the ScotDance Ontario Essay Contest, and are pleased to announce the winner! Congratulations to... Fiona... T! We'll send you your $40 For Reel Apparel Gift Card via email! Thank you to all who participated; we'll be posting the Honourable Mention Essays in the next few days! Please enjoy Fiona's essay below: _________________________________________________________ My heart does not beat in time to any electrical current or pulse that comes from my body. It does not function according to any typical rules. At the very center of my heart there is a tiny highland dancer and every time she dances my heart beats, waiting for that next jump to continue beating on. That tiny dancer is my greatest source of strength, my reason for waking up in the morning. She urges me to dance and that keeps me alive. Before this year, I would not have been able to explain what highland dancing meant to me. I took for granted that I would always be able to dance at competitions, highland games, and recitals. When they were all taken away, I was left with only a tiny dancer in my heart who wanted so desperately for me to keep dancing but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to go to class or how to practice if I had nothing to work for. I had to figure out why I started dancing in the first place. I thought about my five year old self who walked into the dance studio and immediately fell in love with the sound of bagpipes and dance moves with funny names like pas de basques and highcuts. I went to dance class because it was fun and it made me happy. It was such a pure, simple reason but somewhere along the way I forgot that is all it takes. I see this joy in the little kids I teach. When they run into class excited to tell me that they practiced, or when I see the smile on their face after they finish a dance without making any mistakes, it makes my heart swell with happiness and the tiny dancer in there jumps for joy along with my students. This connection I feel to my students shows how incredible highland dancing is that it can connect people across generations; I love each of my dancers in the same way I know my teacher loves me. While I may not always understand the lives of my 6 year old dancers, when they step in the studio and start dancing, I am connected to them in a way that is almost magical. This ineffable, magical sense of community is present in so many ways I wasn’t aware of until I started looking closer. It is present when my Grandad, who immigrated to Canada from Scotland, tells people his granddaughters are highland dancers. It is the pride in his voice that we are honouring his culture and heritage. It is present when I’m walking down the street and I hear bagpipes playing and I share a knowing glance with my sisters because we know exactly what tune it is and what dance we could jump into. It is present in the smiling faces of every dancer I’ve ever shared the stage with. We are all connected by a love for an obscure sport that sometimes feels like a shared secret identity or superpower. We know the difference between a kilt and a skirt. We know that Irish dancing and highland dancing are definitely not the same thing. We understand why people put on so many extra pounds of wool and velvet to dance on a plywood stage in the hot sun at highland games because we love to do it too. I have yet to find anything that rivals the deep and powerful connection I have with other highland dancers. It may have taken a disastrous year for me to realize it, but I have never been more grateful for such an amazing sense of community. I, like so many others, have felt the strain of this pandemic in how little time I’ve been able to spend with friends. We don’t get to see each other everyday and when we do connect, it is through a screen or in a socially distant setting. It’s been a very overwhelming and isolating experience but highland dance has helped me through it. Once I was able to reconnect and remind myself why I loved dance, it became my favourite thing to do again. When I’m stressed or lonely, all I need to do is go to dance class and I know I’m going to feel better. Even though I can’t hug the people at dance, just being close to them and being able to talk and laugh together is the best medicine. It cures the part of me that struggles to get through the day because it seems like this crazy situation is never going to end. While I may have already known the highland world was filled with incredible people, this year has taught me how important it is to have such a strong community. I have also realized it is not enough to acknowledge the existence of such a community, it deserves more commitment. I need to be aware of how this amazing community benefits my happiness and well-being so I can continue paying it forward to the next generation of highland dancers. I promise I will, because without highland dance I definitely would not be the person I am today. It has given me everything from my work ethic to the tiny dancer at the centre of my heart and for that I will be forever grateful. - Fiona T.

Working on strength in all aerial positions and heights, low, normal and high is an important part of Highland Dancing. I often find working on extensions in se...cond aerial and high is the hardest. This exercise works on hip strength in our major aerial positions at your maximum flexibility, which will be different for each dancer. Start with 5-6 reps in each direction and try to increase to 8-10 as you can more control and strength Aim for a straight knee and try not to lift your hip up towards your ribs as you move your leg! See more

Have you mastered these basic pointing exercises? Give it a try! It is important to have good flexibility in our ankles for several reasons and also to make sur...e we are getting our flexibility from the correct muscles. The first two exercises are a part of my warm up and I do them every night to keep my feet happy and strong See more

First video to kick off the weekend is all about flexibility! In the video below I will explain and demonstrate two stretches for the top of the foot and ankle.... These stretches will be helpful for both half points and full points! Stayed tuned for video #2 today in two short hours, which will start into some basic exercises :) See more

One of my favourite quotes Keeping going for 2021

Now available by download: "A Highland Dance Christmas". Like and Share to have a chance at receiving a $100 gift card from Tartantown. Click here for more info... and to purchase: https://www.tartantown.com//alastair-lee-a-highland-dance- Whether you are practicing well distanced or zooming, I hope this brings joy to your highland dancing class over the season. Here is the Ho Ho Hornpipe:

Halloween 2020 Mickey Mouse, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader, Unicorn, Harry Styles, Dancer .... and T-Rex warming up for class. Can you guess who T-Rex is

Some pics from Halloween week