Jazz dance

Jazz dance is a performance dance and style that arose in the United States in the early 20th century.[1][2] Jazz dance may allude to vernacular jazz, Broadway or dramatic jazz. The two types expand on African American vernacular styles of dance that arose with jazz music. Vernacular jazz dance incorporates ragtime moves, Charleston, Lindy hop and mambo. Popular vernacular jazz dance performers include The Whitman Sisters, Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, Al Minns and Leon James, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton, and Katherine Dunham. Dramatic jazz dance performed on the show stage was promoted by Jack Cole, Bob Fosse, Eugene Louis Faccuito, and Gus Giordano.

The term 'jazz dance' has been used in ways that have little or nothing to do with jazz music. Since the 1940s, Hollywood movies and Broadway shows have used the term to describe the choreographies of Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins. In the 1990s, colleges and universities applied to the term to classes offered by physical education departments in which students dance to various forms of pop music, rarely jazz.[3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Mahoney was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Wren, Celia (11 November 2023). "'The Jazz Continuum' explores Black social dance — from past to present - Choreographer LaTasha Barnes celebrates the decades-spanning ties between manifestations of Black artistry in music and dance". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 11 November 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  3. ^ Gabbard, Krin (2002). Kernfeld, Barry (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). New York: Grove's Dictionaries. p. 172. ISBN 1-56159-284-6.