Dance & Phrases
jazz dance arrived at the same time as jazz music in the United States. This world dance was born with the meeting of African and European cultures. From the first, she draws a rhythmic work, from the second she keeps the technique. We then find influences from Indian dances and Latin dances – in particular salsa. “Jazz dance is in constant evolution thanks to a perpetual interbreeding. Initially, it was a social dance. We didn’t immediately consider it a stage dance.” Jazz dance is experiencing a real expansion thanks to two factors. One is socio-political: it is a means of expression for the Afro-American community. The artistic other, via musicals and therefore entertainment. It was in the 1950s that we began to give jazz dance lessons as we know them today. At the time, the goal was to train dancers to audition for Broadway shows.
Ballet was born under the century of Louis XIV with Noverre who created the positions outside, which allow the dancers to move while remaining facing the public.
This new way of dancing, which borrows from traditional dances, will evolve over more than three centuries to become today a grammar of the body with a vast repertoire always renewed by choreographers who constantly explore the possibilities it offers. Today, if different styles exist, classical dance rubs shoulders with and dialogues with contemporary dance, jazz, hip hop, etc.
It is a way to develop one's artistic and musical sensibility and a way to acquire the technical bases of body placement specific to dance.
The bar on the ground or bar on the ground was born thanks to Boris Kniaseff who was inspired by the warm-ups of the dancers for
transpose classical, jazz and contemporary dance movements performed standing "on the floor".
It allows an awareness of the movement in all its amplitude.
It is thus a judicious means of acquiring flexibility, tonicity, elasticity and coordination.