Jazz Dance History in America

as researched by Bob Boross

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BIRTH OF JAZZ DANCE TECHNIQUES

Cole's style influenced a generation of choreographers, including Jerome Robbins, Matt Mattox, Carol Haney, Alvin Ailey, and Bob Fosse, and he is frequently acknowledged as "the father of American jazz dance" Because of Cole, Bob Fosse's Damn Yankees (1955) and The Pajama Game (1954), Jerome Robbins' West Side Story, and the prominence of dance acts like the June Taylor Dancers on television shows, theatrical jazz dance began to receive widespread popularity in the 1950s. Choreographers needed trained theatrical jazz dancers, but in many cases had to devote extra time to retraining classical dancers in jazz-inspired movement. The form was new, and since it tended to assume the individual style of each choreographer a standard training regimen was not in existence. Chuck Kelley, an internationally known dance teacher, noted "At that time nobody was teaching jazz. When I came to New York [1953], you did tap, ballet, and acrobatics. That was it."

To satisfy the demand for theatrical jazz dance training, jazz dance classes eventually emerged. They ranged in complexity from classes that simply taught routines to those with highly structured exercises to hone the mind as well as the body (as in the Mattox technique). Billie Mahoney, in The Dance Catalog, illustrates the disparity when she stated that:

"No set format can be attributed to the jazz class. It is highly individualized, and each teacher has his own particular way of moving ... Dance wasn't really taught - the class was more of a 'jam session' where professionals got together and danced, following their 'leader', and the non-pros who dared just hung in there."

Chuck Kelley noted that:

"There were some black teachers teaching boogie classes. And then Bob Fosse's show The Pajama Game, 1954 opened, and Peter Gennaro and Carol Haney and Buzz Miller were the three stars who brought the house down with 'Steam Heat'. Right after that Buzz started teaching what they called 'modern jazz' classes at June Taylor's studio."