Jazz Blog- 1st year 2019/20 School Year
Jack Cole (1911-1974) was born in New York and is remembered as the prime innovator of theatrical jazz dance. He also gained the title of ‘The father of Jazz dance’. Further, Cole was a very successful dancer and choreographer in his time. Today, I will be talking about what qualities make his choreography so unique, and I will also be discussing how the qualities are shown through the Jason Derulo routine that we are working on in class. Jack Cole developed a very personal mode of dancing that combined, modern, lindy hop, swing, ethnic, acrobatics, and ballet. The ‘Cole style’ is still being used in many aspects of Jazz dancing, lots of his ways are very recognisable in the Jazz dance industry. His unique style greatly emphasised; isolations, deep plies, angled foot placements, quick directional changes and long knee slides, which are all very commonly used now. For instance, the use of isolation plays a huge part in today’s jazz dancing, which has been widely influ...