Jennifer Schoonover

Jen Schoonover is a dancer and choreographer who teaches movement principles, improvisation, choreography, dance pedagogy, and dance modalities including Contemporary, Cape Breton Step, Ceilidh, Highland, and Scottish Country dancing. She led Cape Dance Theater, a student and community ensemble, at Cape Cod Community College for six years. Jen is a founding member of Highland Dance Boston, and, in collaboration with Kieran Jordan, created TurnStyles, a dance group fusing contemporary and traditional Irish and Scottish dance aesthetics. Jen performed with Back Porch Dance Company, Peanut Butter and Jelly Dance Company, and the Allen|Body Group among others. In 2017, she apprenticed with step dancers Mary MacGillivray and Judy McKenzie through the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program. Jen has led classes and workshops sharing various Scottish dance forms throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. Jen’s interest in the history of Scottish dance has led her to seek out dances from non-competitive and non-standardized traditions. A book she cowrote with Mats Melin, Dance Legacies of Scotland: The True Glen Orchy Kick, detailing the history of Scottish percussive dancing, was published by Routledge in 2021. Traveling to Scotland to release the paperback edition of that book in 2022 was a highlight for her. Another publication resulting from collaborative research of Frederick Hill’s 1841 dance manuscript with Mats and our mutual friend, the late Colin Robertson, is forthcoming.