Highland Workshop

Have you ever had the desire to try something new? Perhaps something more active and different than you have done before? Highland dance is similar to Scottish dance and the best of the best teach right here in Utah! Paid professional highland dancers actually come and teach professional workshops to people of all ages who are interested in learning highland dance! In fact, they host a workshop twice a year only in Salt Lake City, Utah where for two hours, you can learn in depth, about highland dance.

This was my first time ever going, and it was so much fun! I will warn you, you will get an intense workout and be super sweaty! But its worth it. The professional highland dancer who taught this workshop is from Texas, but trained a ton in Scotland where the home of highland dance is found.

At the workshop, everyone wears normal workout clothes, except you also wear long socks to help protect your calves since most of highland dance is jumping with your heels up.

The workshop was at Hillcrest High School in the giant dance room where the ballroom team typically practices. Everyone who wanted to participate paid $20 for the workshop fee outside the room and then went inside to start stretching and warming up.

I thought it was cool that the room had star wars characters all over it with a bunch of star wars quotes. Just something entertaining to keep you busy until the workshop started. Once the workshop started, everyone found a spot in the room and the judge started teaching and going through step by step of the fling dance. This dance is the easiest dance of highland to learn and perform. The judge was super picky about where to put your hands and feet but also taught it very slowly and came up with ways to remember the steps and tricks to do even better with the steps.

We spent at least an hour just working on the fling dance. She let us have a few drink breaks and then we started to dance the sword dance.

This dance is where dancers perform around and inside the sword. There are lots of turns and jumps but it is super fun. If you didn’t feel comfortable with the sword, the judge gave you sticks to jump around which I actually thought was easier and less stressful. It was a similar type of learning to the fling where we learned the dance (if you didn’t already know it) and then perfected the steps. We did the sword for about 45 minutes and then we moved on to the lilt. The lilt dance is one of my favorite dances. It is a cross with ballet and highland and is super graceful and pretty. The only hard thing is you are on your toes the entire time. The workshop only lasted for two hours so we just went through the first step of the lilt and then the judge had us do a cool down. I loved attending the workshops and think it is a great workout and cool way to introduce anyone to highland dance to start dancing!