Dance History 301

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Jack Cole’s “Modern” Jazz Dance

Bethany Winter

While reading this article, there was one thing that I did struggle with, and I didn’t really think about it much until I was over half way through the reading. It is also one of my questions. Who is this Cole? I went back to the beginning of the reading once I had finished the reading and skimmed through the first few paragraphs a bit to see if maybe I had missed something or didn’t remember what I had read at the beginning, but it wasn’t any of that. The article didn’t really explain who Jack Cole was. It did discuss, however, how he danced in the Denishawn school and how he used East Indian and Hindu style of dancing in swing and made his own sort of modern Jazz, but there wasn’t really any other description of him. I feel like in the other readings we had done, we learned where these choreographers and dancers came from, but this time, I had no idea what Jack Cole’s history was and I feel like knowing some of the background of Jack Cole might have helped put some things into perspective, and I also believe that learning about the dancer’s history is important to know to how they got to where they were. So, after doing some searching of the history of Jack Cole, I now know more about his life and how he got to become a dancer at Denishawn and what his roots where. I also learned a little bit more about some of the things that were mentioned in the artile, such as his involvement and performances in nightclubs.

Another challenge that I faced also goes along with my other question. What makes music “Jazz music”? Throughout this Jazz dance unit, we have read and talked about all the different styles of jazz and the different types of social dances and how those steps are performed, but one thing that I feel is also important to jazz is the music that is danced too. This article talks a lot about modern jazz, the bebop, swing, and other sorts of tribal dances, and then it continues to talk about, “jazz dance is anything that is danced to jazz music…”, but what makes music jazz music? It kind of continues to explain a little about the music, such as that it has four beats per measure and uses manipulation of timbre, attack, dynamic and movement style. That’s a great description, I think, on how to create a jazz song and what the basics of jazz music might be, but I feel like it’s a very dull description and that could also be music for other sorts of dances.

Questions:

Who is Jack Cole?

What makes music “Jazz music”?

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Social Dancing at the Savoy Dance Hist Blog Post

Bethany Winter

This article was very interesting to read and kind of eye opening. In the past, we’ve always read articles that talked about certain buildings not allowing black people in, and it being kind of difficult to find a studio to dance in if you were black, and sometimes having found mixed buildings and studios, but never once, if I remember correctly, did we learn or mention of a studio, or ballroom in this case, being specifically for African Americans. The Savoy ballroom, although having dances such as the Lindy Hop and the mambo, to name a few, that had cultural equality, was mostly a ballroom not for white people. The Savoy was intended primarily for African Americans, even though there was still a regular attendance of white people. I found that to catch my attention because when I first started reading this article, I kind of just assumed that this was naturally for white people and that sometimes African Americans were allowed sometimes to view or dance off to the side.

It was also surprising to me when I read about how the Savoy ballroom worked. It was open seven nights a week and some nights had their own themes, like Saturday nights were “squares” night. Also, the way that the ballroom was set up when people were dancing. What I’m talking about is how the dancers kind of automatically congregated to their own corners or part of the dance floor based on their skill levels and then would move up when they felt that they reached the higher skill level. That reminded me a lot of my dance studio back at home because all the dancers in my dance classes that had the higher ability stood in the front of the line when dancing across the floor or stood in the front when we were doing warm-ups or learning combos. Without thinking much of it, we congregated with not only our friends, but also based on our dancing ability. Thinking about it, I remember not thinking about why I was standing in a certain place of the room, I just kind of always went there, and it was different for each class depending on what the style was.

Questions:

Why are the dances that were actually created at the Savoy the least remembered dances?

Why was it decided by the ballroom owners and the city to close down the ballroom for good and sell the land for other reasons?

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Shuffle Along Dance Hist Blog Post

Bethany Winter

While reading this article, there were only a few challenges that I faced. First of all, there were times when I got confused as to what was being discussed and it took me awhile to figure that out. It was at the end of page four that I experienced my first challenge. I was reading about an all-black show called “Shuffle Along” and some minor details behind it. For example, how “Shuffle Along” followed a blackface tradition, and it introduced blacks in blackface. I was understanding what I was reading and understanding the explanation of how “Shuffle Along” was trying something new out, two black people falling in love on stage, and why certain people might feel uncomfortable being in the audience for this type of romance and show, but then, the article took a huge turn and started talking about someone, Savion Glover. I dove into this paragraph for a couple of sentences and then stopped, because I was completely confused as to what I was reading and where this was going and what it had to do with anything that I have already learned so far. I went back and read the second to last paragraph on the fourth page (the part of the article still detailing “Shuffle Along”) and then dove back into the Savion Glover paragraph. After reading it again, I decided that maybe it would be better to just continue reading on. So that’s what I did. Continuing on reading, it started to make sense as to how that paragraph related to what I had learned, but it was such a sharp change with no explanation, that I really struggled. That wasn’t the only time that I struggled either. It happened again one more time when all of sudden, the article changed to talking about Obama and movies of the day like “Ride Along”, and “Saturday Night Live”. I wrote on the side of the article that I printed out, “what does this have to do with anything?” I was really confused how we jumped from back before I was born, to just a few years ago. Again, I did the same thing; paused and went back and tried to figure out where this related and how it got there.

**image below** I decided to look up what the playbill of Shuffle Along would look like. I was really interested in it because I feel like a picture says a thousand words and I was hoping I would learn even more about Shuffle Along. Reading the article, it explains a lot about behind the scenes and the actors and dancers and musicians, but I feel like it missed out on some explanations that can be shared with a picture. I was surprised when I came across this image because this wasn’t what I had imagined in my head. I guess I kind of pictured a small theater with a few rows of seats, red curtains, the orchestra in the first few rows, and a few colored people on the stage. That’s at least what I had imagined throughout the reading. So seeing what seems like a white girl, dancing what kind of looks like could be the Charleston, and then a bunch of words, really took me by surprise. I never really thought someone white would be on the playbill since it talks of the blackface tradition being huge in Shuffle Along, but I guess I could also see why they might portray a white girl to drag in that white audience that they wanted to make Shuffle Along become a “white folks” play and drag in that so much wanted money.

 Questions:

Why did white people want to paint their faces black for performances?

How can one not be “black” or “blackface” enough for a performance?

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Juba and American Minstrelsy Dance Hist Blog Post

Bethany Winter

I was really surprised when reading this article because out of all the history classes I have taken throughout my life, it always seemed to me like colored people were just slaves way back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s and really didn’t have a choice with what they did with their life. I had always thought that slaves worked on plantations or in houses and would get beat or sold if they danced or expressed who they were and lived a little in their life. So, when hearing that there were African step-dances, negro art forms in the public, and colored people traveling to perform these culture dances in the 1800’s seemed almost unbelievable. Especially when there were a lot of segregation and rules about what buildings the colored could dance or perform in. This also goes along with my one of my questions. Did white people pay and go see these “negro art forms” on stage and in productions? I asked this question because I’m not sure how all white people reacted to this; if any of them liked the idea of colored people having their own productions, or popular art forms, or if white people were willing to pay to support this style of dancing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6dXrm1YjBE

In this article, there were mentions of minstrels and blackface dances, and we’ve been reading about them for quite some time now, but I never really knew what a blackface dance or minstrel looked like outside the image in my head from reading about them. So, I decided to look up a video and found a video of a Blackface Minstrel Show Sand dance. While watching, I could clearly notice how the dancers face was painted black. In the text, it says “the minstrel show dance retained more integrity as a Negro art form than any other theatrical derivative of Negro culture”. So, to me, painting the dancer’s face black is helping to keep that “negro culture” there in the minstrel show dance. This also kind of ties with my question, “why was “beautiful” almost never used to describe minstrel dancing”, because I personally thought that the dance was beautiful and interesting and I loved watching the video. The use of the sand to create the sounds of the beats with his feet was really creative and unique.

 Questions:

Why was “beautiful” almost never used to describe minstrel dancing?

Did white people pay and go see these “negro art forms” on stage and in productions?

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A Thousand Raggy, Draggy Dances

Bethany Winter

While reading this, there were quite a few challenges I faced, although they were very similar. There were a lot of people that were mentioned, such as dancers, choreographers, pianists, composers, and sometimes even critics. For the most part, none of these people were explained, except for saying if they were a composer, or dancer, or pianist. So, there were a lot of names thrown at me from this reading and it started getting confusing. Obviously, these people have some sort of importance of significance to the history of jazz, otherwise they wouldn’t be mentioned in this article. To help me figure out who these people were, I highlighted their names as I was reading, and then when I got to the end of the section right before it started on a different topic, I would go back and find the names. Then, I went onto google and searched them to just find out a little bit more as to who this person was. I wouldn’t say it was super helpful with the reading and maybe not even necessary, but I found myself asking who these people were while I was reading. That’s why I decided searching who they were would be the best route for me.

 Art Parade:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUpAcPAipDA

I found this video online that shows a 1920’s Charleston dance and I thought it was really interesting to watch I’ve learned and danced some steps from this dance, but I never actually saw what a whole Charleston dance would look like. I chose this piece of art because the reading has a whole section that talks about the Charleston and how it reflects your place in society and your self-definition. There was also a paragraph that described how some steps in the Charleston are performed. The “directions” of the steps were very vague, so although I could kind of picture what they looked like in my head, it was not the same as actually watching it happen in front of my eyes.

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Jazz Dance from Emancipation to 1970 - Bethany

It’s surprising to me after having read two other chapters of this book already, and this being the third, that there is not a lot that I accurately know about jazz dance, even though I have been dancing some jazz style since I was a young child. I had no idea that there was a such thing as modern jazz dance or that tap was considered a style of jazz. Also, I guess I never really put much thought into dances like the Lindy Hop, the Susie Q, the Charleston and others because in my mind, those were their own styles of dance and were independent of every other style of dance. In my mind, those were not considered jazz. I just thought of them as a social dance that everyone knew because to me, not everyone could do jazz or tap nowadays because it’s something dancers are trained in, but the Lindy Hop and others was popular to everyone and everyone did it. So, finding out that the Lindy Hop and tap and all the other styles that are social dances are branches of jazz caused me to hesitate and stop and think. My whole life I never would have thought to consider social dances being an offspring of jazz. It definitely has changed my view of what jazz is and many times while reading this chapter, I stopped and set the book down and thought about how this changes everything, for the most part, that I know about jazz. To me, jazz was always only what dancers were taught in a jazz class at a dance studio, and what happened at Sock Hops or Homecoming Dances wasn’t jazz because the crowd of students weren’t dancers, but normal people who weren’t trained in jazz.

 The reading also caught my attention towards the end where ballet was mentioned. Jazz started to merge with other styles like ballet and modern, which turned jazz more into a concert stage form. At my dance studio back at home, if we wanted to take a jazz class, we had to take two ballet classes a week. This was because we were told that Ballet is the root of jazz and we had to know ballet in order to do jazz correctly or the directors just wanted us to have that ballet background. I never thought much of it because I have always taken ballet and jazz my whole life at the same time, but I remember thinking that in order to be a good jazz dancer and to be considered a jazz dancer, one had to have a background in ballet. I don’t know why I would think something like this, but at the time, it seemed to make sense. So, while reading this chapter, I thought back to my young days and the rules of my studio when it came to signing up for jazz classes and it made me pause when I read about ballet being merged with jazz after some time of jazz being around. I hesitated and thought that I always thought that jazz came from ballet. From the sounds of the book, jazz was independent of ballet at the start, and then later worked its way in the style of jazz. I had always thought that it was the opposite. I never really thought much of the history of dance, or jazz, ever and just did the dances I was taught and worked on my technique. So learning about all this history of jazz is really changing jazz as I know it.

 Questions:

 Why were their taxes on dance floors to help support World War 2?

Was the start of jazz dances mostly due to improvisation?

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Blog Post African Origins - Bethany Winter

Before starting to read this portion of the Jazz Dance book, I decided to go in with an open mind. I have learning and dancing jazz since I was very young. I haven’t learned anything like the history of dance, but I was worried that while I was reading the book, I might have kept a closed mind as if I know everything about jazz already. Starting off with an open mind helped allow me to learn more of the history of jazz dance and resulted in me getting curious about what the different styles of African dances were like. There was a paragraph in the book that mentioned a variety of different, original African dances. After reading that paragraph, I paused and searched all the different styles of dance on YouTube to get a better understanding of the origins of the jazz dance that I know today. After watching a few short videos of these dances, it was more clear to me what parts of the body was emphasized for what dance and I was beginning to picture and think about how much jazz dance has grown over the years from these few styles.

 This portion of reading from the Jazz Dance book really caught my attention. I had some background knowledge that jazz dance came from African ideals, but I didn’t realize how much of what I know as jazz today comes from a wide variety of different cultures of African dances and variations. It was interesting to discover that each different African culture dance has its own focus on a certain part of the body. For example, on page 37, there are a few African styles of dances and what section of the body is focused on. To name some of them, it says the Anglo-Ewe and Lobi Ghana style of dance focuses on the upper body. Then, it also mentions another style of dance, known as the Kalabari of Nigeria, which focuses on the movement of the hips while dancing. 

Questions:

1)    Why were original African culture dances an imitation of a variety of animals?

2)    Why was it necessary for white people to cover their faces with black grease paint or burnt cork while performing their versions of African dances?

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Blog Post Bethany Winter - Jazz Dance as a Continuum

I was excited to read this section of the text just from reading the title. I was curious as to see how jazz dance can be a continuum and in what sense. Continuing on with my reading, I was really surprised that styles such as contemporary, lyrical, hip hop, classical and others are considered a jazz derived or jazz influenced style of jazz. I have been dancing jazz and lyrical and hip hop for a majority of my life and I never even considered those to be jazz. Jazz was jazz and lyrical was lyrical and so on. Everything was its own style. Then, I started to think about it more and began to realize how and why lyrical and contemporary and hip-hop can be forms of jazz. Lyrical or contemporary are a softer and maybe more smooth version of jazz, whereas hip-hop is the sharper and hitting harder version of jazz.

 If I understood this reading correctly, when the author referred to the tree analogy throughout the few pages, the trunk of the tree would be the original West African culture jazz and then the branches would be the jazz derived or jazz influenced styles, such as lyrical and hip-hop and so on. I never would have thought to organize it that way and it really helped fix an image in my head and help me to understand the continuum aspect of jazz and how that can be broken. I guess a lot of times when I have taught dances that I choreographed, there were times when I didn’t use a proper term like pas de bourree and that’s where that jazz gets lost and that continuum disconnects. For me, it’s so easy to not use the correct jazz terms, and if everyone stops using them, then would the original style of jazz eventually be lost and all we would have would be the branches or the jazz derived or jazz influenced?

Questions:

1)    How did the European element of dance appear in jazz dance with the African elements?

2)    If everyone were to break the continuum and stop using proper jazz terms, would the original style of jazz dance eventually be lost and all we would have would be the branches of jazz left?