Administrative Staff
Teaching Staff
Jackie has been teaching children to dance for 15 years at area studios. She served as the Artistic Director of Acton-Boxbourough Dance Center from 2006-2011 before opening the Dancing Arts Academy. Jackie has her Bachelors of Music Education from UMass Amherst, is a licensed public school teacher in Massachusetts, and is excited to begin year five at Dancing Arts Academy, where she can share her love for the performing arts in a supportive and structured environment.
Jackie has previously danced with the Adagio Big Band, the Highland Players, the SRO Players, the Paint and Powder Club, the Mill City Dancers, and Greenglass Dance Theater. Jackie trained with Lillian Carter, Lisa Tenczar, Janice Zawodny, Nailah Randall-Bellinger, and Jimmy Viera. Jackie is currently the choreographer and dance teacher for Beyond the Fourth Wall, a Cambridge based production company specializing in youth theatre. She is also an instructor at Loch Ness Playcenter and choreographs for the Xcel Program at Tumble Kids Billerica.
Composer, pianist, music director, and music educator, Yasmin Tal explores building community through music. Her projects include performances of orchestral, chamber, choral, and solo music along with compositions for film, dance, electro-acoustic, and sound installations; in recent years she has developed a unique style of performing based on unusual notation, audience participation and energetic, risk-taking sound.
Yasmin earned her B.Mus and M.mus in Composition from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, while also completing a B.A. in Linguistics and East Asian studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her compositions have received several awards and nominations; her orchestral piece Steps: Departure, Absence, Return won first prize at the Hanna Yador-Avni competition and was later performed by the Japan-based Kanazawa orchestra at World Music Days festival and her string quartet Heartbeats of a Stranger won second prize at the AICF’s Aviv Competitions. Her work with choreographer Meital Ohana received several awards in the field. Yasmin’s compositions have been played by orchestras and chamber ensembles in the US, Israel, Europe, and South Korea.
Yasmin is a devoted music educator with over 15 years of experience teaching students of various ages and backgrounds. She has led the Hof-Hasharon Music Program, an advanced music program for middle through high school students, where she also produced original musicals composed and performed by music students; worked with at-risk youth through the city of Ra’anana and the Yellow Submarine institute, Jerusalem, and taught music theory, harmony and ear training at Lewinsky College, Tel-Aviv. She is currently on the Music Theory faculty at New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston.