Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century

Rooted Jazz Dance brings together jazz dance scholars, practitioners, choreographers, and educators from across the United States and Canada with the goal of changing the course of practice in future generations. Contributors delve into the Africanist elements within jazz dance and discuss the role of Whiteness, including Eurocentric technique and ideology, in marginalizing African American vernacular dance, which has resulted in the prominence of Eurocentric jazz styles and the systemic erosion of the roots.

Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance

The late Marshall Stearns was author of The Story of Jazz, and was the founder of the Newport Jazz Festival and Institute of Jazz Studies. He died in 1966 while completing his book Jazz Dance co-authored by his wife Jean. Jean Stearns is an authority on jazz and assisted her late husband Marshall in researching and writing Jazz Dance.

Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches

Featuring discussions of such dancers and choreographers as Bob Fosse and Katherine Dunham, as well as analyses of how the form’s vocabulary differs from ballet, this complex and compelling history captures the very essence of jazz dance.

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