Jazz Dance History in America

as researched by Bob Boross

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1960s, 1970s

The 1960s

Although many influences from the 1950s hastened a demise of popular and theatrical jazz dance, the effects were most noticeable in the 1960s. The teaching of theatrical jazz dance was flourishing, and there were many avenues for performance in Las Vegas revues, summer stock, and in Broadway shows. But the feeling of the general population - the American society- had shifted away from social jazz dance. The people - from where the first sparks of jazz dance originally came - had moved past jazz dance as a source of personal expression. America was entering a massive culture change - with a gritty realism of the fight for civil rights, urban ghettos, and changing social mores. Technology again reared its head, as television became more intrusive on the average American's lifestyle. People moved differently, and listened to different music. Like a sponge, jazz dance soaked up these new movement patterns and evolved to a new performance form.

Popular music changed from jazzy standards to the choppy beat of rock, the influences of the Beatles and the British invasion, and sugary pop tunes, and young people flocked to discoteques and released their inhibitions. The beat was rhythmic, but steady, without the surprise aspect of swing and syncopation. The dances, like the Mashed Potato, the Frug, the Swim, and the Twist, took from the basic movement vobcabulary of the African tradition, and therefore were related to jazz dance, but the beat was without the swing of jazz music.

Teen dance/music shows dominated the television airwaves - shows like Hullabaloo, Shindig, and Where The Action Is. In these shows, a new blend of jazz inspired movement was mixed with the social dances of the day, all performed by youthful, highly energetic dancers. The dancers backed up the musical groups who were performing their hit songs, and their dances were, in a way, dancing scenery. Like the Ziegfeld Follies reviews of the 1920s and 1930s, pretty faces and dancing bodies were once again used to back up, show off, and ultimately sell the product of the music industry.

Broadway, previously the home to jazz influenced choreographers like Cole, Fosse, and Robbins, saw a part of its nature change to reflect the mood of the country. While there were still blockbuster musicals of the old type - like My Fair Lady, Hello Dolly, Mame - a new generation of musicals reflected the changes in American society, and dance. Hair was a depiction of the rebellious nature of the hippie movement. And Fosse, that champion of syncopated, tap and minstrel based movement, absorbed the new 60s feel of dance with his hit musical Sweet Charity. In this show, Fosse based much of his movement on the social dances of the 1960s, while injecting his own unique brand of style and angular movement and jutting body parts. The movements of jazz dance had evolved to absorb the blossoming social scene. Broadway was no longer the spawning ground for theatrical jazz dance. It had become a pastiche of old standard styles and movements, and an incubator for a new form of jazz dance,

While white dancer/choreographers basically ran the Broadway dance scene, many African-American choreographers were turning to the concert dance scene to express their thoughts. Although they used choreographic modes from the idiom of modern dance, many were using the moods and movements from jazz dance to set time periods and characters, and evoke the feel of their culture.

Choreographers like Talley Beatty and Donald McKayle were presenting work that made use of jazz dance in a concert setting. Beatty's Congo Tango Palace and McKayle's District Storyville used vernacular jazz movements in a concert piece.

But the most famous African-American choreographer to emerge in the 1960s was Alvin Ailey. Born in Texas in 1931, Ailey began dancing with modern dance pioneer Lester Horton in Los Angeles. His career brought him to New York, and he worked in a succession of Broadway shows at night, while developing a concert dance company by day. Ailey worked with Jack Cole in the Broadway show Jamaica in 1957. The influence of Cole's low down, plie style and be seen in much of Ailey's concert choreography, including Night Creature (set to Duke Ellington) and the "Wade in the Water" section from Revelations. Other Ailey dances from the 1960s that used jazz dance in a concert setting were Blues Suite, Three for Now, and Light!.

The 1970s

The 1970s were a decade of extreme highs and lows for jazz dance. The highs were in the form of two of the best Broadway director/choreographers at their top form - Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse. The lows were in the continual degradation of pop music and social dance - the swing beat was completely obliterated with the advent of disco music, and the standard dances of the 1960s broke down into complete individual movements. On the dance floor, people did what they felt - totally their own movement.

One trend that did affect jazz dance was the rapid growth of disco music. Beginning as a hypnotic beat that came from the gay bars of New York, disco was a lifestyle. The music was heavy on a straight 4/4 beat, the song themes were vacuous, and the dress was stylish and tailored with three piece suits or wild and outrageous outfits. The disco life boasted a hedonistic outlook, where everything and anything was permissible on the dance floor. Clubs like New York's Studio 54 were the epitome of disco's reputation for drugs, sex, music, and experimentation.

Disco hit the mainstream with the tremendous success of the movie Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta and with a music soundtrack that featured the Bee Gees. The film promoted "The Hustle," a partner dance that resembles some of the patterns of the Lindy, and a new style of movement called popping and locking. This involved sharp and hard movements of the body parts - shoulders, head, hips, arms. The primary exponents of this style of street dance was a group called The Lockers. They danced on television shows - dressed in clownish, exaggerated outfits and hats. The Lockers were the first highly visible exponents of a style of street dance that would evolve into the breakdance and hip hop eras to come.

Michael Bennett was a Broadway gypsy - a chorus dancer who made his way to NY and into shows at the young age of 16. In 1974, Bennett sat down a group of fellow gypsies, and asked them to talk about why they like to dance. The result of these confessions was the show A Chorus Line. Opening in 1975, the show became a smash hit, and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize and was the longest running musical on Broadway. A Chorus Line glorified the atypical Broadway dancer and dance style - hard driving jazz dance, tap dance, flamboyant ballet, and showmanship. His success with A Chorus Line, and his soon to come efforts with Ballroom and Dreamgirls, boosted jazz dance and the Broadway gypsy personality to a new level of popularity.

In terms of jazz dance, the decade of the 1970s without a doubt belongs to Bob Fosse. His achievements on Broadway, and also in film and television, were unequalled. Fosse utilized jazz dance in all of his productions - the Broadway shows Pippin (1973), Chicago (1975), Dancin' (1978), the movies Cabaret (1973) and All That Jazz (1979), and the television special Liza With A Z (1973).

Fosse's vocabulary of movements, however, never really grew from his early days in the 1950s. Many movements from "Steam Heat" (1954) can be seen in his work in the 1970s. Fosse created a style that virtually remained the same throughout the four decades of his Broadway involvement. His dances did become more sensual and slick, and less comedic and innocent as time passed. But the overall look of the rounded shoulder, hip popping, elbow jutting, finger snapping song and dance man with the tipped derby remained throughout his career.