Advanced Jazz Dancing

Roger Bennett Riggle: Hello, my name is Roger Bennett Riggle and here we are at the Berrend Dance Center located in Olney, Maryland. Today we are going to be showing you how to do some moves in advanced jazz dancing and demonstrating these moves will be one of my very, very good senior dancers here at the Berrend Dance Center, Mackenzie Royce. Today we are going to be showing you some basic moves that will fit together and a wonderful segment of dance. The first thing we will be showing you is Aerobesque, which will then fall into Chasez steps, which will go into Chinez turns, after the Chinez turns we will demonstrate for you a single Pirouette and a double Pirouette, which in advanced jazz I request that they at least be able to do a double Pirouette and we even do triple sometimes. Then we will demonstrate how to do a Stag Leap, which is a very impressive, impressive jump and we will exit the segment with a step we call the Great Vine. To give you a little history about jazz, jazz is normally credited with it's beginning based on the birth of Louis Armstrong. During these early years when Jazz was formalizing itself in its style and its sound and its music. The human body naturally formed the rhythmic movements and tones of the music in dance form and this is the form that has become Jazz dancing. Basically for your equipment, it is a great idea to have jazz shoes of course, because they are made to do the form of jazz dancing and to have jazz pants. Most of the students here wear a Leotard top and we request that they wear little to no jewelery and usually for jazz dancing, I accept the hair in a pony tail. Normally, the hair is up in bun for the ballet training so that you can have your hair in a bun or in a ponytail. So it is very important that you be comfortable in your outfit and that you can stretch and move to perform the jazz dancing and not have anything in your way while you are doing that. Also, you want to be prepared in a warm up. You want to be able to loosen up the neck, the shoulders, the hips and to stretch the legs mainly in isolations and then you want to go into stretches with the back and extensions with the legs in splits, in putting your legs up on the bar and stretching your torso over the legs. You need to be very, very warm and limber and lubricated to prevent yourself from being injured in any form of dance and that's especially true in jazz dancing because it has a tendency to move so very, very quickly. The Berrend Dance Center is a classical and professional ballet training school. With the education that the students get here in classical ballet, they also immersed in other forms of dance for their education. Hip Hop, modern, jazz and Tap. Currently, I am on the faculty of the Berrend Dance Center and my job is to educate them in the styles of jazz and Tap dancing.