Jazz

21/09/14

The History of Jazz Dance

Jazz dance was first created in Africa, during the 16^th century. African jazz dance was used to express feelings such as joy, sadness or high celebration. That African dance was afterwards brought to the US because of slavery, and therefore expanded in the US.

In 1930/1940, dixieland was developped in New Orleans, and spread to Chicago and NYC. Jazz was then brought into shows, and became very used in musical theatre, one of the most famous example is west side story.

1500	1800/1900	1920's	1930/1940	1950's
African Jazz	Cake Walk (vaudeville shows)	Charleston	Jazz Tap	Cool Jazz (WSS)
1960's	1970's	1980's	1990's	Present
Fosse	Disco	Commercial	Street Dance (hip hop)	Fusion of different dances

One of the most popular jazz dance in musical theatre is the tap dance. As previously stated, tap dance was created around 1930/1940. Jazz dance never stopped evolving but kept its African origins, and tap dance is a perfect example of it. Tap dance is a mix of african movements, based on rhythm, british clog dancing and irish gigs. Its popularity increased as the minstrel shows declined in vaudeville theatre. Tap dance can be seen in some of the most famous musicals such as Top Hat (1935 film, brought on stage in 2011 at the Aldwych Theatre), Anything Goes (1934 broadway), Thoroughly Modern Mollie (1967 film, brought on stage in 2002), Singing In the Rain (1952 film, brought on stage in 1983 in London) and Guys and Dolls (1950 broadway).

Tap dance uses the sound of the dancers' shoes on the floor as a percussion; there are two different styles of tap dance, one is based on the dance and the other on the musicality.

Some of the most famous tap dancers include William Henry Lane (Master Juba), Bill Robinson (Bojangles) and Gene Kelly who starred in Singing In The Rain.

23/09/14

Today we started learning/improving our pirouettes and kicks, worked on the strenght of our supporting leg for both of the exercises. Then we started to learn a new choreography on "fever" by Michael Buble. 

I need more time than others to learn the moves so I need to film it and keep practicing at home, because I clearly can't follow the rhythm

01/09/14

Today we kept on learning the Fever choreography, I'm glad cause I managed to catch up with most of the group. 

We also heard almost every presentation on the different styles of jazz dance, we had speeches about hip hop, lyrical jazz dance, charleston and fosse.

08/10/14

Today we learnt a bit more from the choreography... I'm completely lost, Bring on the work ! ;-(

21/10/14

Today we had our dance assessment. We performed the choreography of Fever and also had to add our own solo into the dance. I wasn't here when the group started to create them and I didn't have time to do it in between so I ended up improvising a solo bit and really don't want to think about how it looked like. I thought my performance was better than what I had done in rehearsals which is good, but I missed a few moves and that really annoyed me. I think I still need to improve my confidence and focus a bit more on my posture and arms extensions.


















15/02/15

BOB FOSSE

B. Fosse was born in June 1927 in Chicago. He is from a big family and started his acting at a young age, touring in the theatres of Chicago with Charles grass. Fosse got a few ensemble roles in Broadway before appearing in the movie "Kiss Me Kate" (1953) that he also choreographed. One year after the movie's success, he got he first Broadway choreographer job for "The Pajama Game". All the musicals he choreographed were a huge success, however, he was rejected by a lot of directors because his style of dancing was considered too suggestive. He therefore decided to become a director as well as a choreographer to maintain his successful work. Bob Fosse has a record of Tony & Academy award won for his work including Pippin, Cabaret and Chicago. Fosse died in 1987 of a heart attack.