I had the privilege of participating in a modern jazz class. I assumed modern jazz was Jazz dance with a mix of modern and contemporary. Jazz is my favorite form of dance but contemporary and modern are my least favorites, so of course, going in I expected to like some parts but dislike other parts of the class. Although I was familiar with jazz dance I wanted to explore different versions of Jazz.
Jazz dance evolved from early African American dances in the early 1900s. During Slavery the Slave Act of 1740 prohibited slaves from performing African dances and playing African drums so African Americans found replacements, they began using bone clappers, banjos, and rhythmic sounds with the hands and feet. Several characteristics from African Dance carried on into more modern forms of dance. These characteristics were bent knees with the body close to the ground, using the whole foot, isolation of body parts, syncopated movements, the individualism of style within the group, along with other characteristics. Jazz dance began as a traditional Black-American social dance and turned into a major dance genre, because of this a lot of the movements were less expressive.
During the early 1900s, the dance became extremely popular with white people. I think the use of these dances was borderline appropriation, in the chapter Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies by Jane Desmond, she mentions part of appropriation is reworking the movements and essentially watering them down which is what White Americans did. In the 1920s American whites liked the music and dances the slaves created and soon after white entertainers parodied their style of dance and music. Before jazz dance was popularized, Jazz dance was typically tap dancing to jazz music. Jazz music was popularized in ballrooms by bands in the swing era which altered the style of European and American social dance. Later on, dances such as the Charleston, lindy hop, boogie-woogie, jitterbug, cakewalk, black bottom, were developed to jazz music. Today’s Jazz dance is presented in different forms and is an important part of musical theater.
The majority of the dancers wore leggings and tank tops, no one wore leotards. In my experience with Jazz classes always began with stretching and a warmup. The movements would consist of sharp isolations, one warmup was called isolation where we would first isolate the upper body with arches to the front, back, left and right and then we would do the same thing in a fluid motion. This same stretch would be done on the hips as well. After isolations, we would stretch our legs by doing plies and relevés these were followed by other stretches used in ballet and hip-hop classes. After stretches, we did across the floor. The across the floor movements consisted of a lot of rolling on the floor and loose flowing movements. One across the floor movement we used that I really liked was barrel turns across the floor which before this class I thought were very hard but I definitely think I mastered after this class with the help of some dancers in the class. After the choreographed across the floor we had to improvise across the floor, at this point I could recognize the contemporary aspect of the class.
After the stretching, we took a short break. I noticed there was a wide variety of dancers in this class, the youngest was a 15-year-old who was there with her mom who had danced with the company for a while. Other dancers, there were students looking to dance at a company or in college, and adults dancing after work to stay fit or just for fun. The dancers all participated fully and enthusiastically
After the break was over we came to the center to do some choreography, the teacher of this class also choreographed several productions, some of which I was in so her teaching style was not new to me. One of the first thins we did was lay on the floor, I think a lot of these movements are parallel to what I read about early African Dances which stated that a lot of the movement was close to the floor. Coming off the floor we used an inversion to stand. A lot of the movements were done with flexed feet and there were a lot of sharp movements. There was a lot of walking across the floor and turning. The finished choreography was really great, it consisted of all of the characteristics mentioned earlier. The choreography had a lot of bent knees, groundwork, and flexed feet.
This dance class really did mirror a lot of the properties found in early African Dances. The social aspect of jazz was incorporated in this class with a lot of facing each other and dancing at each other. I noticed a lot of the movements in this class are similar to those I’ve used in my own choreography and in musical theater. Jazz is the primary form of dance used in musical theater and I think that is because of its expressiveness and bold movements. When you think of Jazz dance you most likely won't think of cultural appropriation but the history behind Jazz shows that it was originated from African-American dances.
Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Jazz Dance." Encyclopædia Britannica. April 12, 2018. Accessed November 30, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/art/jazz-dance.
Cayou, Dolores Kirton. "The Origins of Modern Jazz Dance." The Black Scholar 42, no. 2 (2012): 8-13. doi:10.5816/blackscholar.42.2.0008.
Desmond, Jane C. "Embodying Difference." Meaning in Motion, 2012, 29-54. doi:10.1215/9780822397281-002.