Jazz Dance is a kind of ballet, modern dance, African Dance, Show Dance, Theatre Dance, Social Dance and East Indian Folk Dance in one of the "multi-performance dance", so unique, unique. Jazz dance and music originated in the United States, with a strong background of black slave culture. Until the 1920s, "Jazz" was popular everywhere and everyone was eager to learn it. Dancing jazz dance needs to have a solid basic through, coupled with the mind and body of the full commitment to the essence of the performance.
Jazz dance is an extension of African dance, which was brought to Native Americans by black slaves and gradually evolved into a localized, popular dance in the United States. Black Africans were subjected to a three-hundred-year-long slave trade, which led to their demobilization in the United States and around the world. In their new environment and new life, they lived a bleak and miserable life of slavery, but in spite of this painful situation, they still did not forget their music and dance. No matter in the joy, anger, sorrow, happiness or worship gatherings, as long as they had the opportunity, they would sing the songs of their hometowns and dance their folk dances, which gradually turned into a joyful, urban type of music and dance over a long period of time. As they continued to innovate and invent new dance steps, Americans gradually became interested in these rhythmic black dances.
Jazz dance evolved in the early twentieth century as a result of the natural accompaniment of jazz music. The earliest jazz dances were performed by black social dancers to jazz music and were prevalent in the countryside of the southern United States, especially in the city of New Orleans, where amateur dancers would perform jazz dances at parties or clubs. By 1917, the popular dancers of the time performed along with the lyrics of the song, and one of them, W. Benton Overstreet, wrote a song called "The Jazz Dance," which " became a permanent synonym for Jazz Dance, and the name Jazz Dance came into being.
When Jazz Dance appeared in the form of "Dance Music", those black and white dancers improved and varied the basic steps, in addition to inspiring innovations from latecomers who added hip swings, shoulder shakes, and independent movements of other parts of the body.
With the black people of New Orleans began to play their jazz music in 1920, there were a lot of popular rock dances in the form of mixed clubs, such as the Charleston, Shimmy and Lindy, all of which were prevalent for a while, and later on, due to the birth of Boogie-Woogie, there was a big change in the type of dance. Later, due to the birth of the Boogie-Woogie, there was a great change in the type of dance, from the dance of embracing in the past to a kind of Jitterbug in which the dancer and his partner danced separately.
During the second half of the 1930s and into the 1940s, jazz evolved into three types of expression: the first was modern jazz with a strong classical ballet flavor, the second was jazz influenced by black and Latin dances, and the last was mixed jazz with tongue-in-cheek music and tap. Despite the popularity of jazz at the time, it began to decline in the late 1940s as new jazz music replaced the big jazz bands, and its rhythms were too complex to match the dancing, and the invention of the phonograph and the heavy taxes levied by the government (in the U.S.) on dance venues led to the closure of many of the dance clubs that had been so popular for a while.
The decline of old-fashioned jazz dancing, though, represents a rite of passage. Because the United States is a melting pot of nationalities, the new jazz dance has a very high degree of integration; it mixes the old jazz steps with the new steps that were popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and the rise of the mass media drove the jazz dance to flourish.
The jazz dance we see today retains the melodic, body-throwing, and independent character of the syncopated music of the past, but it is not only performed to jazz music; it can also be performed to pop, blues, rock, or disco music. Today's jazz dance has a great deal of inclusiveness and strong plasticity, and can always absorb the most popular music and dance characteristics, and because of this, jazz dance is very entertaining and popular and accepted.
Development of Jazz Dance in Hong Kong
Jazz dance in Hong Kong is mainly used in stage performances, typical examples include Aaron Kwok and Sammi Cheng. Take Aaron Kwok as an example, his songs such as "Wild City", "Legend of Innocence" and "Sing This Song" all use jazz dance to enhance the effect of stage performance.
Features of Jazz Dance
Additionally, the backing dancers seen in concerts or MTV are also a kind of jazz - Modern Jazz, which can be broadly categorized into traditional jazz and modern jazz. The former has more restrictions and requirements; the latter has fewer restrictions, so there is more freedom and more changes in steps to match the beat of the music.
Note: Syncopation - Normally, the order of strengths and weaknesses in a measure is clearly defined by the beat notation, but in order to make changes to the beat, the position of the strong notes can be changed, that is, the position of the stresses in the regular measure can be temporarily moved to other beats. When the rhythm changes from a normal strong beat to a weak beat or to a rest or to no beat, the rhythm is syncopated, and this method of making changes in the beat is called "syncopation". When a strong beat falls in an unintended syncopated rhythm, the action becomes very exciting and exhilarating; it is also known as the remodeling of alliteration, and it is also the basis of jazz.