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HISTORY OF JAZZ & BALLET

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A Brief History of Jazz Dance

Since the 1920s, the term jazz dance has been used to describe a
constantly evolving form of popular artistic movement. According to
Marshall and Jean Stearns in their book Jazz Dance- The Story of
American Vernacular Dance, jazz dance is a blend of African and
European traditions in an American environment. Africans danced in
celebration of birth, puberty, marriage and even death. There were
also dances to demonstrate competitive skills. Dances included the
entire community, from the children to the elderly and were primarily
accompanied to the beat of various types of drums. This practice of
dance movement to interpret life carried over to the culture of the
African-Americans during the time of slavery.

African dance contributed the following characteristics to dance in

America:

A flat-footed gliding action, dragging and shuffling the feet

Movement performed in a crouch, with knees bent and body

bent at the waist

Movement that generally imitates animals

Movement that exhibits improvisation, allowing for freedom

of expression

Movement that is centrifugal, exploding from the hips

Movement that is performed to a propulsive rhythm to give

a swinging quality

In America, the dance movement of Africans was restrained by two

main factors- the attitude of the Protestant church that dance was
immoral and the restricted use of the main instrument, the drum. The
church felt that dancing stimulated the senses and that type of activity
should be avoided. Drumming was banned following a revolt by the
slaves who sent messages to one another using drumming signals.
Despite these limitations, African-Americans persevered and found
other instruments such as quills, banjos, pipes, hands, stomping feet
and the fiddle to accompany their dancing.
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Provided the plantation owner had given consent, dances occurred on

plantations for recreative and religious purposes. Many of the
recreational dances imitated animals with steps called the pigeon
wing or the buzzard lope. Competitive dancing was also a form of
entertainment not only for the slaves, but for the owners as well. On
special occasions, a platform was built for the dancers to perform
upon. Slaves attempted great feats of movement and the winner was
determined by the plantation owner. The most well-known competitive
dance was called the cakewalk. Slaves developed this dance as a
parody of their owners; their upper body would be stiff and formal to
represent the plantation owners while their loose leg movements
imitated African dance. It was customary for the winner of the
competition to receive a cake as their prize.

Dance performances began to cross racial barriers when Caucasians

Americans began to perform a stereotype of a dancing slave.
Performers darkened their faces with burnt cork and imitated African-
American dancers. Despite the division between the two worlds, as
more people began to dance, jazz dance continued to evolve pulling
elements from a variety of cultures.

Between the years of 1845 to 1900, the most popular form of

entertainment in America was the minstrel show. It consisted of a
group of up to fifty performers who travelled from town to town in a
show that portrayed slaves as a shuffling idiot or a sharply dressed
man.

The next development in jazz dance came in 1910 when ragtime music
and ballroom dance developed. The Turkey Trot, the Monkey Glide, the
Chicken Scratch and the Bunny Hug were all dance steps from this era
that were inspired by African dance.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, jazz music exploded on to the scene and
more specifically, swing music. Swing dancing soon developed with
dancers performing syncopated footwork, dancing in a crouched
position and the partnering of dancers who would dance together and
then breakaway to perform individual dancing.
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In the 1940s and 1950s, the dance steps became more complex as the
advent of be-bop jazz developed. Dance halls, which were a popular
form of entertainment for the masses during this time, suffered a blow
with the invention of television. Instead of going out dancing, people
were staying at home to watch television.

Jazz dance has continued to evolve alongside popular music and has
gone through several changes. From Madonnas Vogue to pop culture
dances like the Macarena to televisions shows such as So You Think
You Can Dance, jazz dance is still a popular form of entertainment for
people of all ages.

A Brief History of Ballet

Ballet began as a court dance in the palaces of Europe first in Italy and soon
spreading to France. In the late 16th century (1500s), Queen Catherine of
France mounted the first ballet with a dramatic plot, called Le Ballet
Comique de la Reine. Nearly a century later, ballets prominence was further
enhanced by Frances King Louis the 14th who loved to dance. He created
the first dance school in order to codify the steps so they could be developed
and passed on to future generations. Eventually private court performances
moved into the public theatres of Paris where only men were allowed to
perform. The movements performed at that time were very small compared
to the grand leaps, jumps and turns that we see today.

In 1681, women were finally allowed to perform on stage, however, they still
wore long and cumbersome dresses which did not allow them to show
intricate steps like the male performers who wore leggings and tunics while
they danced. Around 1720, dancer Marie Camargo shortened her dress a
few inches to reveal her ankles and removed the heels from her shoes. This
set a new standard for the female dancer, which allowed her to dazzle
audience members with brilliant beats of the legs and amazing leaps. Over
the next century, ballet spread across Europe even further with prominence
given to the companies of France, Italy and Denmark.

From about 1830-1850, ballet experienced the Romantic period that also
impacted painting, music, literature and drama. Romantic ballets portrayed
ethereal creatures such as fairies and took place in far away exotic lands.
Ballets from this period include La Sylphide and Giselle. This period also saw
the introduction of dancing on pointe as used by Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide
in 1832. This gave the dancer a quality of lightness as if she was about to
take off into the air. By the middle of the 1800s, ballets success shifted from
France to Russia. Russian choreographer Marius Petipa created numerous
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ballets to the music of Tchaikovsky such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and
The Nutcracker.

During the early 1900s, artistic entrepreneur Serge Diaghilev brought

together many great artists from visual arts, music and dance to create Les
Ballet Russes dance company. Dancers such as Anna Pavlova and Vaslav
Nijinsky, along with choreographer Mikhail Fokine created influential ballets
to the music of Igor Stravinsky. These ballets included The Rite of Spring
which caused a riot when the show opened in Paris. Les Ballet Russes used
dancers from all over the world who Russianized their names. Canadian
dancers Nesta Toumine became Nesta Maslova, Rosemary Deveson became
Natasha Sobinova and Patricia Meyers became Alexandra Denisova. All
three dancers performed with Les Ballet Russes and when they returned
home to Canada, they brought their knowledge and experience home with
them.

Through its evolution in the 20th century, new ballets have moved away from
the long, multi-act story ballets towards abstract ballets which emphasize
concepts or moods or simply interpret music through movement; however,
the classical ballets are still performed all over the world.