Tap and Jazz History overview

—The Black Crook featured dancing, spectacular stage sets, scenic effects, shocking costumes and a colorful cast of characters including Satan, demons, an artist, a fairy queen. It was more about entertainment than art.

Minstrelsy or The Minstrel Show

It was a performance with Afro-American music, but the performers where white men in black faces.

The Cakewalk

An Afro-American entertainer who became the most famous minstrel dancer.

Master Juba (after a famous dance step he found in Cuba)

It is clapping with any kind of dance. Is a special routine of slapping the hands, knees,thighs, and body in a rhythmic display.

Since slave holders forbid Africans to use or posses drums, then they used their feet as a way to transfer the sounds of the drums.

1. Syncopation

2. Improvisation

Either with music or without music also known as cappella dancing

1. Rhythm Tap: part of the dancing of slaves in America; closer to the floor uses mostly footwork and not showing very much arm or body movement.  Today these dancers are called “Hoofers”

2. Show (Broadway) Tap: uses more arm movement and choreography of upper body

"Buck and Bubbles Show performed by:

• “ John "Bubbles" Sublett (tap dancer)
•  & Ford "Buck" Washington (piano).

• Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. He was very popular, highly paid, and acted in several films with Shirley Temple.
• —
• Known for tapping up and down stairs (no taps on his shoes, just thick wood)

The Nicholas Brothers

Harold Nicholas (1921-2000) & Fayard Nicholas (1914-2006).

Jazz dance evolved out of tap dance, therefore both dances have many moves in common. Then it becomes a new form in its own right.

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Africa

• 1. The crouch (legs bent at knees and ankles with spine flexible and loose)
• 2. Strong attack that propels movement back and forth
• 3. Movement that starts from the pelvic region and continues outward and movement that appears in an isolated limb (hand, head, or shoulder)
• 4. Movement that shimmies, shakes and trembles
• 5. A tendency to improvise (often satirically) which allows for freedom of individual expression

Syncopated rhythm

—In opposition to the mood of World War I (1914-1918) jazz music and dancing rose in popularity during the 1920’s. The period is often referred to as the Jazz Age.

Vernon Castle and Irene Castle

Dance competitions that lasted 2 -3 days. Non -stop dancing and a depressing phenomenon during the Jazz age

—Origins are credited to George “Shorty” Snowden – a Harlem marathon champion.

—During one marathon, he flung his partner away and began to improvise solo steps on his own

Anthropologist and dancer Katherine Dunham.

Jack Cole

• —Isolations, rapid directional changes, angled placement and long knee slides.
• —
• He also developed techniques that are currently used in musicals, films, television commercials and videos

He developed choreographies for important stars such as Marilyn Monroe

Jerome Robbins

Ballet, jazz dance, street dance and Harlem rhythms into his own unique voice

• —On The Town
• The King and I
• West Side Story
• Gypsy
• Fiddler on the Roof

Eugene Louis "Luigi" Faccuito

It's an influential training program that promotes body alignment, balance, core strength, and "feeling from the inside."

The Luigi Warm Up Technique

• —He made his disadvantages work for him:
• 1. He had a rounded back so he rolled it
• 2. He was going bald so he wore hats
• 3. He had poor turn out so he turned in

—It was highly creative and often included bizarre movements; it was slick, erotic and intense.