The Basics of Jazz: A Guide To Basic Jazz Dance Steps
By: Juan Carlos Moya
Jazz dancing may be seen in everything from television shows and movies to music videos and ads, whether you realize it or not. Jazz dancers are popular because their routines and skills are entertaining and lively.
Jazz dancing is a style that emphasizes a dancer’s uniqueness. Jazz dancers all have their unique interpretations and executions of moves and steps. Fancy footwork, powerful leaps, and rapid turns are all part of this style of dancing. Ballet provides a good foundation for jazz dancers, as it fosters grace and balance.
If this is your first time taking a jazz dancing class, be prepared to move a lot. A good jazz lesson bursts with energy. The beat alone will have you moving, with music styles spanning from hip-hop to show songs. Most jazz instructors start with a thorough warm-up and then guide the class through a series of stretching and isolation exercises. Isolations entail moving one area of the body while the remainder stays still. Suspension is a technique used by jazz dancers. Suspension is when you move through a position rather than stopping and balancing in it. To avoid muscle soreness, most jazz teachers will close the class with a quick cool-down.
Your instructor will teach you a variety of steps, but you should endeavor to personalize each one. Dancers in a jazz class are urged to imbue each step with their own unique individuality. Basic turns, such as chaines, piques, pirouettes, jazz turns, and some ballet turns, are all included in jazz steps. Grand jetes, twisting jumps, and tour jetes are examples of leaps. The “jazz walk” is a trademark of jazz dance. Jazz walks can be done in a variety of genres. The “contraction” is another prominent jazz move. The body is contracted with the back curled outward, and the pelvis dragged forward during a contraction. The basic jazz square and leg grips will also be taught.
Jazz dance encompasses a wide range of styles performed to jazz music. Jazz dance grew out of the origins of jazz in Black American society and was popularized in ballrooms by big bands during the swing era (the 1930s and 1940s). It dramatically changed the style of theatrical and social dance in the United States and Europe in the twentieth century. The phrase is also used to denote (1) popular stage dance (excluding tap dance) and (2) jazz-derived or jazz-influenced genres of modern dance. It excludes social dances like the rumba and other Latin-American dances that don’t have jazz accompaniment.
The Basic Jazz Dance Steps
For the 1st Position, form a V shape by touching your heels together and pointing your toes away.
For the 2nd Position, slightly move your feet away from your other feet pointing outwards.
For the 3rd Position, bring the heel of your foot closer toward the middle part of the other foot.
For the 4th Position, bring your foot forward while leaving the other foot stationary.
For the 5th Position, Bring your forward foot to touch the tip of the toe of the other foot.
Jazz dance evolved from stage dance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as traditional Black social dances and their white ballroom offshoots. Minstrel show artists in the 19th century combined Irish jigging, English clog dancing, and African rhythmic stamping to create tap dancing on stage. When vaudeville was supplanted by Broadway revues and musical comedies in the early twentieth century, tap dancing and other social dances like the cakewalk and shuffle became popular vaudeville acts and appeared in Broadway revues and musical comedies. Furthermore, humor, specialty, and character dances to jazz rhythms became commonplace on stage. By the 1940s, aspects of jazz dance had made their way into modern dance and film.
Jazz Dance is considered to be one of the most influential kinds of dance. It is used to express feelings and emotions as well as your own unique way of dancing. It emphasizes the creativity of the dancer through their dance.
Always be unique with how you create your jazz dance steps since there is a variety of them, and so for the next time you are asked to make your own choreography on Jazz it will be an easy task.
Reference: https://www.britannica.com/art/jazz-dance
