Jazz Dance in Movies - Essay Example

Jazz dance has greatly been affected by communal dance and common music. This paper is intended to describe the history and development of jazz dance.

1. History
Rhythms and movements that were brought to America by African slaves have come upon the origin of jazz dance. The style of African dance is all natural; low, knees bent, vibrating body movements emphasized by body isolations and hand-clapping. As slaves immigrated to America, starting during the 1600s, Africans from different cultures were separated from their families, languages, and tribal traditions. This resulted in the merging of African cultures which created a new culture with both European and African components. The Slave Act of 1740 intended to prohibit slaves from performing African dances, but that did not hide their wish to grip those parts of their cultural identity. African dance involved movements and rhythms which included hand-clapping, foot stamping, and tapping, and currently, this is known as jazz dance.

1. Development
The term "Jazz" was initially related to a genre of music dance during World War I. Jazz in a dance form, however, emerges from the parlanceAfricans’ dances when they were being brought to the Americas on slave ships. This form of dance emerged together with jazz music in New Orleans at the beginning of the 1900s. From the 1930s to the 1960s, Jazz dance changed from this body of parlance into a theatre-based performance form of dance that needed a much-trained dancer. During this time, dancers from the ballet and modern dance worlds experimented with the jazz dance style. All of these dancers affected jazz by wanting many trained dancers to perform a given set of movements, which was very different from the informal form of New Orleans back in the 1900s. Also, during this span period (circa. 1950) jazz dance was intensely affected by the Caribbean and other Latin American dance styles which were established by anthropologist and dancer Katherine Dunham. Jazz is also like choreography too.

Jazz dance throughout its history has grown in collateral to the common music. This pattern of development has brought about a few components of movement that were essential to the dance style; significantly, jazz is the physical representation of the popular music of a given time. For example, during a down time of jazz dancing (1945 to 1954), the parlance of the dance followed less jazz and leaned more toward rock and roll, which created moves like "The Monkey" and "The Jerk."

Jazz dance in the new century keeps running to both the experience in the classics for stimulation and moving forward to create new dance performances. In some ways, Center Stage is a reminder of Flash dance in the storyline, and also in that dance was granted a huge boost, and dancers yet again noticed the significance of coaching in different types of dancing styles. The present-day jazz dance performance world has sought different types of performance rostrums. Concert shows with musical superstars present dancers as an integral fragment of their concert entertainment.

Jazz dance, and distinct musical comedy, have begun to be a primary theme park entertainment. Music videos and major television productions, such as award presentations, are still eminently in use of jazz dance. Jazz dance history has evolved in conjunction with the music and moods of each decade. African American culture has been a huge effect on the development of jazz dance. For instance, Breakdancing, and Hip Hop are all nurtured out of the full-bodied, and dance heritage of African American culture. Today jazz dance is acknowledged as the only contribution to American dance art (Margot 67-120). Read More