Sophia Jensen

Dance 1010

1/7/2021

Chapter 6 Paper

Dance is incredibly important in our culture. Chapter six of Appreciating Dance tells a

story of how jazz, tap dance, film dance, and theater dance, influence society and the way we as

a culture see dance. Each dance show and influence different parts of our culture. It also reflects

the way we see our own culture, and how each dance came to exist. People took many different

cultures and created new dances, whether that be from stealing dances from others or not, it

influenced much of the United States culture and dance. It truly shows the United States original

dance.

Tap dance was a very important cultural touchstone. It brought people together by using

dance as a performance. People truly loved the excitement that this style of dance brought. Tap

dancing was easily accessible. People could make music and rhythm while they were dancing, a

way that minimized the money needed to actually make and preform music. A lot of origins from

dance come from African cultures, and because of that there was a lot of racism on the stage,

performers using blackface. A few black people did get incredibly popular, but white people

mostly used the dance. Tap dance did evolve beyond that though. It became incredibly popular

with the stage and theater. It was incredibly entertaining to watch, and people would create

whole troops of dancers.

Jazz dance was created when people stopped wanting the traditional tap dance. People

realized that they could make better dances if there was a mixture of different cultures. Jazz
dance was used a lot in theater, as in film. It replaced tap dance after it became more popular.

Jack Cole was a dance choreographer who used his skill to heavily influence Jazz dance. He was

a skilled and tough teacher. Bob Fosse was also a prominent teacher, using his platform to

showcase the way his wife danced. He influenced a lot of Jazz music and choreographed a lot of

dances. Jazz music and jazz dance took the idea of tap dance and created a whole new way to

dance.

Film and theater dance have influenced cultures in a sort of similar way so this paragraph

will be pairing the two together. Theater dance took the popular dances like jazz and tap, and put

them on stage. This in turn, would influence movies and the rest of the world. It was a clear and

easy path to getting the world invest in a specific way of dance. Vaudeville was an incredibly

influential stage performance. People would go around and preform in front of so many people,

showing others popular dances in the region. There were many performers at vaudeville, not just

tap and jazz dancers. Other performances were able to showcase art around the US. People

traveled all about the country, becoming incredibly popular. This was a major way to influence

dance and it’s culture.

Dance has always been an important part of culture. There have been a countless number

of choreographers who wanted and worked for dance, supporting the arts with tap dancing and

jazz dancing. People have always loved dance, and because of theater and film, it was able to

connect people in a new way from before. It allowed people to see and experience a new way of

dancing, through their culture and community. People have always been dancing, but this

connected the US in a way it hadn’t before. The dances have always been less of a country wide

idea. So both Jazz and Tap were able to influence dances even now, because of how influential

they were back then.