Jazz Dance History in America

as researched by Bob Boross

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1980s, 1990s

As the 1970s drew to a close, the free form, anything goes atmosphere of that decade shifted to a faster paced American life. Punk rock, a rebellion against disco and psychodelic music, became popular and brought a faster, harder edged beat. The music came from the lower class neighborhoods of London, and it embodied a raw, nasty tone of defiance. On the pop side, computer programmed drum and synthesizers were invading top 40 music. The beat became faster, also a reflection of the aerobics and exercise boom of the 1980s. Music was again changing, and jazz dance changed along with it.

Broadway dance suffered the biggest decline in quality jazz dance during the 1980s. Michael Bennett, creator of A Chorus Line, had died from AIDS. Bob Fosse worked on STAR 80, a non-musical film, and returned to Broadway one last time with his musical Big Deal in 1986. Fosse then died in 1987 of a heart attack. Jerome Robbins, the last of the top three director/choreographers, had been working exclusively in ballet for many years. In 1989, his retrospective, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, was a strong hit, and its presence underscored the lack of dance in recent musicals.

Another trend of the 1980s on Broadway was the emergence of composer Andrew Lloyd Weber from England. His musicals, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, and Song and Dance gave opportunity for Broadway style jazz dance, but they were still primarily vocal shows. Broadway continued without a new emphasis or breakthrough in jazz dancing. Jazz dance was seen in the shows Jelly's Last Jam choreographed by Hope Clark,a revival of Guys and Dolls choreographed by Fosse dancer Chris Chadman, and Tommy, by A Chorus Line cast member Wayne Cilento.

The film industry gave visibility to some forms of jazz dance with a series of hit productions in the 1980s. The street dance antics of The Lockers and a newly emerging urban dance, collectively called "breakdancing," gave film companies an electric, eye catching body/dance movement. Flashdance(1983), 1984's Breakin' and Fast Foward, and1980's Fame, made dance from the street popular.

Breakdancing was a free, open body movement characterized by electric boogie (a smooth, continuous wave of movement throughout the body), poppin' (sharp hard accents of the body parts, almost like a spasm), and breakin' (gymastic like movements and spins on the floor, sometimes spinning on the hands, arms, back, and head). It originated in urban ghettos, particularly in the South Bronx in New York in the 1970s.

In the 1990s breakdancing became hip hop, a culture of youth and street toughness. It had its own music (rap), clothing (extremely baggy pants and backwards turned baseball caps), and vocabulary.The dance moves of hip hop are derived from the same base as jazz dance - an African style of movement. But hip hop does not utliize a swing beat. Hip hop dance is not jazz dance in strict definition, but rather more of a close cousin to jazz dance. It shares some of the characteristics like torso movement, shuffling movements, and improvisation. The music that spawned the hip hop movement vocabulary is not from the jazz tradition, but from a time that predates jazz. If anything, hip hop is a return to a simpler, less musically complex, more rudimentary form of dance movement than jazz dance.

A new direction in commercial jazz dance was invented with the debut of the MTV video television channel in 1981. Begun simply as a promotional tool for popular music, the channel played non-stop video clips of musicians and their new songs. MTV was a huge success, garnering the complete attention of most of the country's youth and young adult population. As production values increased, dance became more and more a part of the video's concept. It was natural for rap groups to use breakdancing within their videos, and even older mainstream acts like Elton John and Pat Benetar used forms of jazz dance to enhance their videos.

By the end of just one decade, MTV had radically altered both the image of jazz dance and the primary format for its display. Whereas Broadway musicals and the old film musicals set the style of jazz dance and were the goal of young dancers, now the hipness of hip hop and street dance dominated the consciousness of the nation.

The top video act to use dance was Michael Jackson. His videos to the songs "Beat It," "Billie Jean," and "Thriller" pushed him into super stardom, and broke the racial lock against African-American performers on MTV. His subsequent songs like "Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," and "Black and White" made considerable use of his unique blend of street toughness and older styled Broadway moves. Other dance acts included Paula Abdul, who used tap and jazz dances; M.C. Hammer, who rapped and dance to funky street moves; and Prince.

MTV videos used the moves of jazz and street dance, but in the long run did not add anything creatively to the genre. Dance in videos is used virtually as a moving background for the singers of the musical group (similar to the teenage dance shows of the 1960s). The movements are not normally born from the lyrics or concept of the song, and the rapid editing and cuts of the video style tends to eliminate any choreographic intention. MTV gave instant and total visibility to street dance and some forms of jazz dance. But it did not allow for artistic use of jazz dance, as the primary reason for the video itself is to sell music, not create a choreographic dance piece. MTV used jazz dance, but did not contribute anything to its artistic growth.