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The recycling of European dances by slaves from the Louisiana plantations are, in some away, at the root of the birth of jazz.
Black people who were deprived from their traditions and beliefs had no other resource than to observe, retrieve and renovate them so those of their white masters. Product of the natural and sophisticated, jazz dancing was thus predisposed to obvious contradictions: animality and rigor, improvisation and organization, profane and sacred... As fashion has evolved, this complexity hasn't stopped enriching itself from the integration of the myriad of specific artistics encounters, especially classical dancing which is of major influence.
Unique cultural amalgam in the choreographic history of art, after almost being the "visible part" of jazz music (music born from dancing!), it has created its own environment and has asserted itself as a gifted language with a universal personnality.
Because it celebrates with no affectation, necessary cults to man made from flesh and feelings, because it sends back in musical forms and gestures of popular essence, jazz dancing has considerably contributed to awake public interest for the whole choreographic art. Its role in the success of musicals is no longer to be proven.
In France, penalized by the igorance or indifference of potentates of the official culture, jazz dancing has been tarnished and therefore has misled a large number of students, notably the ones applying for the degree in teaching. True jazz dancing, or even modern jazz, is not more a flow of stereotyped gesticulation than 'disguised in black" contemporary dancing is.
Did you say feeling? DANCING JAZZ IS TO TESTIFY JAZZ CULTURE. Whith no passed nostalgia, but in the spirit of perpetuating identity.
That is the option that we privilege in Nice.
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