History of African-American Vernacular Jazz Dance
“A Night-Club Map of Harlem” (1932) by E Simms Campbell
African-American Vernacular Jazz Dance (AAVJD) is influenced directly by rhythms and customs from Africa, by the people who were abducted and enslaved during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. According to the book Steppin’ on the Blues there are six characteristics of AAVJD: rhythm, improvisation, control, angularity, asymmetry, and dynamism. In Africa, dance was an integral part of everyday life. Dance was used as a celebration for birth, marriage and other rites of passage, as well as emulating everyday activities like planting and harvesting crops. The people who were brought in as slaves may not have had a common language or culture, but they could connect through dance. They would stand in a circle and connect with each other through a series of claps, stomps, and shouts using rhythm, song and dance to communicate. This particular form of dance was called “ring shout”. As time went on other styles of dancing evolved on the plantation, such as The Cakewalk.
These dances made their way to general audiences through minstrel shows, then Vaudeville, and finally the theater and ballroom. The Lindy Hop, the main type of social dance that we perform at, originated from Harlem, NY in the late 1920’s and is derived from many dances and includes the characteristics from Steppin’ on the Blues described above. Some dances that influenced the generation of Lindy Hop are the Break Away, Charleston, Jazz, and Tap. Below you will find “A Night Club Map of Harlem”. “The Home of Happy Feet”, the Savoy Ballroom was supposedly America’s first integrated ballroom. This place was the most happening place when it came to social dancing, and people often came to observe as well as dance. The Savoy was the home of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers.
One specific dance that our troupe focuses on is Charleston. It is thought that the Charleston originated from Ashanti African dance according to jazz dance historian Marshall Stearns. It is also possible that it came from Gullah culture. Gullah culture is in reference to specific Black culture of Charleston and the “low country.”
References:
https://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/academics/colleges/hclas/geog/geog_honors_moorea10.pdf
https://sites.google.com/site/ugadancehistory/afam-dance
https://swungover.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/made-in-carolina-the-rich-history-of-the-charleston/