Jazz dance
Jazz dance is a dance form rooted in African American social dances and shaped by jazz music. It includes vernacular traditions and theatrical styles.
African American vernacular dance: Social and performance dances developed within African American communities, marked by rhythmic complexity, improvisation, and distinctive movement traditions. Jazz dance grew from these community practices rather than from a single theatrical invention.
Ring shout: A communal African American worship practice combining circular movement, rhythmic clapping, and singing. It illustrates African-derived movement and communal rhythms that informed later Black dance traditions.
Broadway dance: Dance created for musical theatre on Broadway, integrating choreography with songs, characters, and dramatic action. Jazz dance became a defining movement language of American musical theatre.
Tap dance: A percussive dance form in which performers use metal-tipped shoes to create rhythmic sounds. Both draw on African American traditions, but tap makes footwork itself a source of percussion.
Lindy Hop: An African American partner dance that developed in Harlem in the late 1920s and 1930s. Its movement entered stage and screen performance, while its Black social origins were often obscured.
Jazz music: A musical tradition originating in African American communities, characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and evolving styles. Its rhythms and phrasing shaped the movement and timing of jazz dance.
Cakewalk: A nineteenth-century African American social dance that parodied white ballroom manners and later became a popular stage dance. Its path from Black social dance to commercial performance anticipates jazz dance's theatrical development.
Bob Fosse: An American choreographer and director known for angular movement, turned-in knees, and stylized gestures. His stage vocabulary became one of the most recognizable theatrical forms of jazz dance.
Ballet: A theatrical dance form built around codified technique, formal positions, and sustained training. Theatrical jazz may borrow ballet technique while retaining different rhythms and movement qualities.
Minstrel show: A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century entertainment form built around racist caricatures of Black people. Minstrelsy commercialized Black-derived dance while reinforcing racist stereotypes.