Jazz Dance Exploration: Personal Growth Through Movement & Expression

This essay reflects on a personal journey into jazz dance, sparked by an interest in diverse dance forms and a desire to expand teaching capabilities. The author explores the rhythmic and stress-relieving nature of jazz, highlighting its numerous benefits, including improved flexibility, muscle strength, and emotional expression. The essay delves into the six dynamic ranges within jazz dance, such as even, percussive, impact, impulse, swing, and vibratory, emphasizing the dialogue with gravity and the use of energy from the ground. The author shares a specific dance experience, noting the challenges and excitement of a particular step. The ultimate goals are to deepen understanding of jazz dance, share its rich history, express individual style, and establish a unique approach to this art form, with the aim of becoming a well-known and knowledgeable jazz dancer. Desklib provides a platform for students to access this and other solved assignments.

Running head: JAZZ DANCE
Jazz Dance
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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JAZZ DANCE
My whole childhood I spend dancing hip hop and grew old with a dream to become a
dance teacher. In other words, I like gathering knowledge on different dance forms. However,
providing dance classes and having a own dance school with the capability of teaching maximum
number dance forms. One day, while searching out dance videos of different dance forms, my
eye hold on a video of a jazz tutorial which later I saw and found it to be interesting and joyous.
Then, I read some books on its history and steps on the internet which made me decide to study
jazz dance course. It is performed with the rhythmic tone and the steps were soothing enough to
make stress out. This dance form I found was one of the best and I knew it would help me a lot
in my future to grab more students and provide me with the opportunity to teach them.
Jazz dance has a variety of dance steps which is much interesting for me because it gives
me an opportunity to learn more and more steps. The most exciting I found about this dance form
was its immense number of benefits such as health and physical benefits, independent to express
emotions and artistic expressions (Cain et al. 2015). Jazz dance includes stretching which makes
the body flexible and strengthen the muscles of arms and legs (Filar-Mierzwa et al. 2017). This
dance will also help me to sharpen for further other styles of dance as jazz includes variety of
steps under it. Jazz lets each of dancers to express his or her own self creativeness and explore
body movements to be free flow of personal expression. It brings out the individuality in each
(Cohen 2015).
The six phrase type within jazz’s dynamic range are:

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JAZZ DANCE
Even dynamic can be described as when right arm is crossed in front of the body over to
the left side at about shoulder height and then moving it across the body in a comfort, even
motion.
Then with the same motion as in even dynamic. Just using strong and energetic
movement instead of even motion, while moving the right hand across the body. This movement
is known as percussive movement. It works well with synchronized movement.
Again, starting with arm across the body same as even and percussive. In this dynamic,
initially to start with slow motion and then speed up and get stronger at the end of the movement.
This strike of energy is known as impact.
Impulse is opposite to impact. It starts with a spurt of energy and in the end the
movement fades away instead of stopping as like in even and percussive.
In this dynamic, the right arm is to be hold over to the left of the body. The arm dropping
down and swinging in front. Then while crossing from the bottom, a speed is to be maintained at
initials but slowing down at the end. This movement is known as swing dynamic.
In vibratory, the same hand moves across the body to the right by shaking the hand in a
quivering motion.
Jazz dance releases into gravity and processes it to use it for the dynamic. Jazz dance
grabs a dialogue with gravity then embraces weight, processes it and then finally sends it out. For
a dancer, it is a two way conversation, where the dancer drops into a low center of gravity and
then bounce back energy is used that comes from the ground.

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JAZZ DANCE
For example, the step that day in class where after lifting my partner from over me and
flowing right hand from the left side, then we both needed to drop down our knees on the floor
and bounce back in the air and stand back. It was a bit difficult but exciting at the same time.
In this course, the initial goal is to learn as much as about this dance form. It has an
interesting history that needs to be explored and make other people know. Jazz dance looks more
beautiful when danced with a jazz music. Both jazz music and dance is a collectively history of
America (Guarino and Oliver 2014). I want to make this dance form an art for me to express
emotions and to get the opportunity to spread the history and etiquettes of jazz dance form to
others as well. This dance will give me a platform to express my individual style different from
others. The main goal as till now is to put an extra effort to establish own style and implication of
this form to become the best known as with much of information about this style.

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JAZZ DANCE
Reference
Cain, K.L., Gavand, K.A., Conway, T.L., Peck, E., Bracy, N.L., Bonilla, E., Rincon, P. and
Sallis, J.F., 2015. Physical activity in youth dance classes. Pediatrics, pp.peds-2014.
Cohen, P.G., 2015. Empowering Students to Take Risks: Redefining the Introductory Jazz
Course. Dance Education in Practice, 1(2), pp.9-12.
Filar-Mierzwa, K., Długosz, M., Marchewka, A., Dąbrowski, Z. and Poznańska, A., 2017. The
effect of dance therapy on the balance of women over 60 years of age: the influence of dance
therapy for the elderly. Journal of women & aging, 29(4), pp.348-355.
Guarino, L. and Oliver, W., 2014. Jazz dance: A history of the roots and branches. University
Press of Florida.