Podcast 114 - Why aren't we doing Jazz Dance to Jazz Music? A history lesson with Moncell Durden.

3/18/2020

Episode 114 of DanceSpeak is here. Hold on tight to those jazz slippers as we whisk you away to the origins of jazz dance. Not the ballet-based lyrical, not the thrash thrash to the Britney Spears, but the roots... the lesser known story.

You might have met Moncell on episode 103 as I interviewed him more broadly on his background as a professor of dance whos been on faculty at some of the top universities in the country. (Please know that he would probably cringe at my emphasizing his being a professor, he'd probably say something like "I'm just a person"). One of the ideas that we spoke about after was interviewing him on the origins of jazz dance.

I always wondered why I didn't learn jazz dance to jazz music. Where was there a disconnect? Did the two art forms happen to have the same name? These questions and more are answered here. In this episode we start digging into the past, honoring those who came before us... especially to my dancers, dance educators, and choreographers, let our appetites to learn who came before us be an insatiable one.

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