Jazz Dance
Jazz dance is a performance dance and style that arose in the United States in the mid 20th century. Jazz dance may allude to vernacular jazz about to Broadway or dramatic jazz. The two types expand on African American vernacular styles of dance that arose with jazz music. Vernacular jazz dance incorporates ragtime moves, Charleston, Lindy hop and mambo. Popular vernacular jazz dance performers include The Whitman Sisters, Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, Al Minns and Leon James, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton, and Katherine Dunham. Dramatic jazz dance performed on the show stage was promoted by Jack Cole, Bob Fosse, Eugene Louis Faccuito, and Gus Giordano. The term 'jazz dance' has been used in ways that have little or nothing to do with jazz music. Since the 1940s, Hollywood movies and Broadway shows have used the term to describe the choreographies of Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins. In the 1990s, colleges and universities applied to the term to classes offered by ...
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Jack Cole (choreographer)
Jack Cole (April 27, 1911 – February 17, 1974) was an American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director known as "the Father of Theatrical Jazz Dance". Early life Jack Cole made his professional dance debut with Denishawn at Lewisohn Stadium in New York City in August 1930. He began his training as a modern dancer only six weeks prior, studying with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. He was entranced by the Asian influences their dance school utilized in its choreography and costuming. He also performed briefly with Humphrey-Weidman, and was influenced by the pioneering modernists Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman."Jack Cole biography"
filmreference.com, retrieved April 6, 2010 Eager to make a living as a dancer during the Depression, he soon left the