About Us

Samantha started dancing at the age of five with the Sheila Carter School of Dancing in Chadderton. Miss Carter was the original owner of the school and is now a fellow examiner for the ISTD which is the syllabus they follow at the school.

In 1991 Miss Milnes took over the school from Miss Carter and at sixteen Miss Williams became her assistant and began working towards her teaching qualifications at Merseryside Dance and Drama Centre, so that she could enter pupils for exams and be fully qualified. In 2001 when Samantha was 21 she took the school over from Miss Milnes’ on her own and has never looked back.

Miss Williams has made her school expand in not only pupils and teaching staff but across the education sector too. Samantha is extremely proud to not only run her own school in the evenings but to be also teaching in many private nurseries, (some that have gained ‘outstanding’ ofsted reports after watching Samantha’s lessons) and also teaching in primary schools in the local area during the daytime. This gives those children who may not normally get the opportunity to dance outside of school, the privilege and joy of dance.Samantha works extensively across Oldham and Rochdale including after school clubs and covering PPA now that Dance is a requirement for the curriculum. Most recently Miss Williams has provided dance sessions during the holiday periods to disadvantage children which she has found most heart warming and rewarding.

Prevouisly Samantha has enjoyed being part of the Manchester Area Organisers Committee for ISTD, arranging central exams for teachers in the north west.

Samantha is super proud of her teaching team and S J family which now consists of past pupils, Miss Lauren, Miss Vanessa, Miss Chelsea and long term running teacher Miss Jen who first joined the team when Miss Williams was pregnant with her first child over 17 years ago. She is also honoured to include Miss Tara who is now our resident Commerical and Acro teacher and Miss Keira who teaches Advanced Jazz and some of the classes within our contracts in schools.

Samantha is so honoured that her large schools continues to grow, being one of the longest running dance schools in the area and loves making memories, careers and opportunities for all her pupils. Nothing has made Samantha prouder than how her pupils had been so resilient to the recent Covid outbreak. Samantha wanted to make sure that despite being in lockdown, her love of dance was still able to reach her pupils. She succeeded with this arranging Zoom sessions from the start of the pandemic and ensuring everything in her power that they had a dance school to come back to once normality hit.

Samantha is now the main body behind all emails, invoicing, social media, marketing and the day to day running of the school. Despite not teaching as many classes, her focus is now on concentrating on private tuition, school contracts dance parties, giving dance opportunities to her pupils and making S J Dance the best that it can be. This has been no more apparent than our recent move to our 5 star studios at Ram Mill Business Centre.

Samantha has worked so hard to make her dance studio state of the art with all mod cons , heating, air conditioning, mirrors, surround sound music system making this the go to dance studio in the area.

Using all her years of experience Samantha helps her teachers with ideas and advising her pupils how they can flourish in confidence and develop their path within dance, makes her studio the place to be.

Samantha believes the moto of her school is that it is a second family. Everyone is welcome and dance should be inclusive for all.

Recently Samantha has gained her Acro qualifications and now runs SEN classes for those children who need extra support but love to dance.

Tara began teaching and assisting dance classes at the age of 14 years old in her local community of North Wales working with children from all backgrounds and abilities, this is where she grew a passion for community and inclusive dance.

Tara graduated with a HNC in Dance from The Arden Theatre School a BA Honours in Urban Dance from The University of East London and a Postgraduate Degree (MA) in Inclusive Dance from Middlesex University.
Tara has trained in Los Angeles and choreographed for Music Videos whist studying and training at top London studios.

Tara has worked as a freelance dance practitioner for 15 years delivering classes for many dance schools, universities, colleges and private education institutions. Tara is qualified as a teacher of dance with the IDTA and a HipHop/Street dance teacher with the NATD. She also is a beginners Acrobatics instructor with Acrotrix. Tara teachers our Acrobatic Dance and Commercial classes every Thursday

Former student of sjdance,
now dance teacher -MissChelsea

Chelsea Trained dance at oldham college and then pursued her dance training at the Hammond school of dance in Chester with a full scholarship gaining her professional dance diploma of 3 years.
She then auditioned for carnival cruise lines in 2012 and followed her dreams as a professional production show dancer/ cast manager with carnival for 10 years.
In 2017 she then perused more training in Tennessee USA in Latin and ballroom placing 1st place in theatre arts Tennessee state dance competition.

She is now full filling her dance in teaching here at sjdance, With the joy of teaching her wonderful students. Miss Chelsea also enjoys being part of the Oldham Legacy Team where she still gets to dance for herself once a month.

Vanessa has been dancing at the school for over 25 years, having passed many exams in Jazz, Ballet, Tap and Modern. Vanessa was involved in many shows herself as a child at Samantha Jane’s, as well as helping younger pupils before leaving to complete a university degree in primary teaching and special needs in which she achieved a first-class degree. Vanessa continued her dancing throughout university and also set up, and was president of, the body conditioning and lyrical dance society in Lancaster.
Having been drawn to Zumba dance, and enjoying our class whenever she returned from university, Vanessa finished university, and completed numerous Zumba qualifications in order to teach Zumba at the dance school. Most recently becoming qualified in Zumba circl and Zumba plate. Vanessa has been back teaching various classes at the dance school for over 15 years and loves teaching both adults and children. She is a very much-loved member of the S J Dance family.
Alongside teaching at the dance school, Vanessa has taught in mainstream schools and has been a full-time teacher in a school for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Vanessa is trained in Makaton, Singalong and British Sign Language and has used some of these skills within the dance school at times.

Vanessa is our charity team member and always takes the reins to source our charity events and fundraising for the school. Most recently raising £5500 for our dancing dudes dance for our 2023 show.

Vanessa wants to thank her husband, family and friends for their continued love and support in everything she does.

Samantha is really honoured that Miss Lauren has continued to teach Contemporary Dance and Tap here at S J Dance. Lauren manages to juggle her full time Primary teaching job, where she teaches some dance lessons within her school with her Monday/Wednesday night sessions at S J Dance. Samantha frighteningly still remembers Miss Lauren as a little Mickey Mouse at the tender age of 8! performing in one of her first ever shows at S J Dance all those years ago.

Lauren has been dancing at the school for more than 25 years, taking exams in Tap, Ballet, Modern, Jazz and National. After enjoying performing in many of the SJ Dance shows and helping with the younger pupils, Lauren went on to complete a university degree in Dance Teaching in which she achieved a first-class honours degree. During her time at university, Lauren joined the LJMU Jets Cheerleading squad which went on to compete in Blackpool and for sometime Lauren also taught cheerleading at our dance school too.

Lauren continued her dance teaching qualifications and achieved her ISTD DDI Tap Teaching qualification whilst at University. After university her love of teaching took her to London as a secondary dance teacher, running her own shows and applying dance groups in competitions.

She returned back home to Oldham and accepted a job as a primary school teacher. As her love for dance was still always her passion, she is now able to combine her primary school teaching day job with teaching classes at SJ Dance.

Lauren is now involved in running the contemporary classes for both our younger children and older students due to her classes being so popular. Most recently during covid lauren became qualified to teach Contemporary for entering pupils for exams.

Her love of tap continues as she now takes the senior girls lessons and on occasions covers the adult classes too.Lauren is always on hand to help in covering lessons and assisting Miss Williams and is super committed. She still adult classes every week and would like to thank all of the SJ Staff, her family and to be husband Oliver for their continued support.

Jennifer started dancing at 3 years of age where she danced at the Janet Lomax School of Dance. It was here she was first introduced to ISTD Tap and RAD Ballet.

At 7 years old Jennifer changed schools and continued her dance training at Rossendale Dance and Drama Centre. It was here that she began the UKA syllabus and also ballroom and Latin. By the age of 15 Jennifer knew this was her chosen career path and successfully passed with Distinction her choreography exams on 3 levels.

Jennifer successfully gained a place at Preston Dance College on the Professional Dancers and Teachers Course, a three-year course studying health and safety, Life span and development and teaching the ISTD Syllabus. Here she passed all her major exams in TAP, Ballet, Modern and National.

Jennifer completed all her teaching exams at Preston College and became a fully qualified teacher allowing her to enter pupils in for exams.

Jenifer became a maternity support worker at North Manchester in 2015 and in August 2023 changed jobs to become a directorate PA . Jennifer combines this job with her dance teaching work at S J Dance, along with being a mum to her 2 children Jacob and Eden.

As dance has always been Jennifer’s passion she still has a keen interest in working at S J Dance. She is the longest member of the S J Dance teacher team, she started teaching for Samantha over 17 years ago when Samantha was pregnant with her first child Isabelle. Jen now teaches on Wednesday evenings yea hung the senior girls and Adults.

Jennifer would like to thank her husband Jordon and her close family and friends for their continued support.