DANCE STYLES
Dance styles, or genres, have a unique history and have developed over time into their current form. The following sections provide descriptions for understanding dance in context and links to find out more about these dance forms:
Hip Hop
Jazz
Ballet
Contemporary
HIP HOP
Perhaps one of the most misunderstood dance forms, hip hop is also one of the newest. Originating in the early 1970s, with its roots deep in Afro-American dance, hip hop dance is the direct result of a marriage of two separate movements from the United States: the “b-boy” movement from the ghettos of New York, and the “West Coast Funk” movement from the streets of Los Angeles.
The b-boys and b-girls of New York City were largely influenced by Capoeira (a Brazilian form of self-defence disguised as dance), tap, the lindy hop, James Brown’s ‘good foot’, salsa, Afro-Cuban and various other African and Native American dances. West Coast funk dance styles, such as pop and lock, were similarly inspired by the funky chicken, Chubby Checker’s ‘twist’, James Brown’s ‘the popcorn’, ‘the jerk’, cartoon animation, and other such movement from every day life.
Many concerned parents and educators write hip hop off as a violent or hateful form of dance that is inappropriate for their children. This is simply not true. According to J-Decibel, “Hip hop is the way of portraying skills, creativeness, teaching righteousness and feeding the listeners with knowledge of the self.” In other words, hip hop is a form of art, and, like other art forms, simply reflects the environment in which it was created. If anything, hip hop may have slowed the violence on New York City streets by providing gangs with an alternative way to express sovereignty and gain respect (than using guns. As Dave ‘DaveyD’ Cook once wrote, the hip hop culture is “an accessible form of self expression capable of exciting positive affirmation from one’s peers.”
To learn more about Hip Hop:
Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip Hop Dance by Jorge 'Popmaster Fabel' Pabon
Hip Hop Culture Timeline
International Hip Hop websites:
http://www.ukhh.com/elements/breaking/intro.html
http://www.msu.edu/~okumurak/japan/history.html
http://zine375.eserver.org/issue1/living5.html
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JAZZ
Jazz dance was inspired by the African slave dances in the United States that Southern plantation owners would encourage their slaves to perform. Even then, dance was seen as an uplifting, recreational activity, and was therefore healthy for both the slaves’ psyche as well as their bodies.
First brought to the stage by white dancers mimicking the black slaves they had seen, jazz has since gone through a turbulent history; transforming from what was once considered one of the most lewd and inappropriate forms of dance to one of the more widely known and practiced.
Today in the United States, jazz is even blended with other forms of dance and music to create slightly different flavoured styles such as theatre jazz, contemporary jazz, lyrical jazz, and jazz funk.
To learn more about Jazz:
Jazz Dance: The History of Jazz Dance
Jazz Timeline
The Origins of Jazz
Please note: Many of these websites focus more on jazz music than jazz dance. To learn more about the history of jazz dance, go to your public library and check out books such as:
Jump Into Jazz by Minda Goodman Kraines and Esther Pryor
Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement by Gerald Jonas.
BALLET
Ballet has always played an important role in the evolution of popular dance. Originating in Italy during the Italian Renaissance, and later popularised by the French courts at the turn of the seventeenth century, ballet requires an incredible amount of discipline to be performed correctly. In mastering such intensive, demanding technique, ballet dancers achieve such levels of grace that they look as though they are "heavenly beings, floating gently upon the ground".
Such ethereal intentions of classical ballet deter many people from the art form as they believe ballet to be patrician. Ballet, however, provides the building blocks and form required to succeed in all forms of dance, and though often intended to portray a sense of superhuman elegance in its flowing movements, can portray any story, be it comical or dramatic.
To learn more about Ballet:
A Short History of Ballet
Ballet through the Centuries
CONTEMPORARY / MODERN
Unlike many earlier forms of dance, contemporary dance has been largely inspired by philosophy as well as movement. Drawing from the teachings of
Nietzsche
and scientology, and exotic dances from the Far East, India, and Africa, contemporary dance was formed as a break from the tight structure of ballet to create a looser form of dance.
Because contemporary dance focuses both on movement as well as the philosophy of movement it is best understood through learning about the creators of the dance, and understanding why and how they contributed to the form’s development. To learn more about Contemporary:
The Early Moderns
The Beginnings of Modern Dance
Modern Dance
History of Modern Dance
Smithsonian: Biography - Modern Dance
Thank you to Leah Hurwich for preparing this DANZ resource.
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