Jacky Christian, of Nashville, is a prolific dancer, dance instructor, and dance scholar with decades of experience studying and sharing Southern dance traditions. Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Jacky’s earliest memories are of community square dancing and solo traditional dancing. As a child, Jacky absorbed every dance and movement style that she encountered, including tap, ballet, jazz, adagio, acrobatics, and gymnastics. In the late 1960s, during the Folk Revival, Jacky moved to Birmingham and began attending regional folk and bluegrass festivals. After meeting traditional musician Jim Conner, she regularly joined him on visits to musicians and dancers throughout the region. “It was during this time that I understood my own family dance traditions and learned from dancers in this area,” Jacky explains. “And thus, I had my own style of traditional/folk dance.”
In the early 1980s Jacky moved to Nashville and soon met Dickson County buck dancer and dance teacher Robert Spicer, who became a mentor. “I immediately felt in awe of him and his dancing, teaching, and young dancers,” Jacky says. “I began what I later considered an informal apprenticeship and collaboration with him. I was fascinated at how he taught his dancers without actually formally teaching. I would attend wherever Mr. Spicer and his dancers were going on the weekends such as the Mule Day Festival, local square dances, Uncle Dave Macon Days, the Smithville Festival, and his invitational appearances.”
During this same period, Jacky became well known and sought after as a guest dancer and instructor. She made dance appearances with Bill Monroe, the Doug Dillard Band, the Dillards, and John Hartford, among many others. Monroe featured her as a dancer at his Bean Blossom festival, as a solo dancer on the Grand Old Opry where he would join her in buck dancing performances. Jacky was invited to perform and teach at venues such as the Ozark Folk Center, Berea Christmas Dance College, and Memphis in May and Memphis Folk Festival. She developed a studio of accomplished dance students and formed the Country Kicks Dancers, who accompanied her on many appearances.
Jacky taught buck dance classes in Nashville at Becky Brown’s Dance Studio in Brentwood, at Centennial Park, at the Belleview YMCA and the Belleview Jewish Community Center, as well as through the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Art-In Education program. She later formed The Old-Time Music and Dance Foundation, a nonprofit organization with a mission to preserve music and dance traditions in Tennessee. The organization staged community shows highlighting traditional musicians and dancers and conducted an extensive oral history interview project focused on traditional dance and dancers. Transcriptions from these interviews were published in the Old-Time Music and Dance Newsletter, Stepping In Time.
After a hiatus from dancing and teaching, Jacky is now returning to the traditions to which she dedicated so many years of practice and study. As part of the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program this year, Jacky will guide Ben Heithcock, of College Grove, through an extensive course of study of traditional styles of buck dance, buck and wing, old-time, flatfoot, rhythm, and freestyle dance. This is not the first time Jacky and Ben have worked together. Ben, along with is sister and mother, started dancing with Jacky’s group when he was just 5, and stayed until it disbanded. He later danced with the Rocky Top Revue in Franklin, TN and eventually joined the Grand Ole Opry Dance team. For this project, Ben seeks to reestablish the traditional foundation of this dancing.
“Ben is an accomplished dancer,” Jacky explains. “He has added steps and movements to his repertoire since dancing with me and County Kicks. Ben contacted me in early 2024 and told me of his desire to go back and review exactly what and how I had taught my classes. He has been trying to pass traditional buck dance on to his three daughters.”
“My goal is to pass along the art of traditional/freestyle buck dancing to my children/grandchildren as well as non-family members,” Ben says. “I want to preserve buck dancing for future generations. Ms. Jacky has a structured way of teaching buck dancing: a strong foundation that consists of dance steps, understanding rhythm & keeping time with the music.”
