The 2023 Dance Teacher Awards will take place on Thursday, August 10 at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in New York City, and you’re invited! Click here to buy tickets. Sheila Barker is vivacious, filled with a magnetic energy and infectious laughter. It’s no wonder that the popular jazz teacher at Broadway Dance Center and […]
Dear DT+ Community, Competition season is well underway—and for many of us that means clocking in hours of practice, tackling challenging routines, rounding up all the bobby (and safety) pins you can find and dealing with the stress of a bazillion costumes (some of which might have only showed up in the nick of time). […]
This summer, as for the past 42 years, students will flock to Colorado to immerse themselves in jazz dance training and performance. High school and college students, professional artists and teaching artists alike will find opportunities for growth and connection. The Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop honors tradition while also embracing innovation and change within the […]
2019 has been rife with fantastic holiday songs that are simply BEGGING to be choreographed to. From Pentatonix to Kacey Musgraves, these bangers are the perfect match for your upcoming holiday-themed jazz class. Use each song for different elements of class (warm-up, across the floor, combo, etc.), or have your students get in groups and […]
This sequence takes dancers through several foundational poses of the Giordano jazz technique. These positions aren’t stagnant—they flow together with continuous energy. Nan Giordano stresses that the dancer’s powerful gaze is quintessential to authentic technique. “That’s my dad’s look—the Giordano eyes,” she says. “All the intensity comes through the eyes, focusing and imagining, but not […]
When Joel Hall enters a studio, students fall silent and rise in respect. He can command a room from its corner with merely a facial expression, but more often, he takes charge by getting into the thick of the dance, letting the beat of the house music move him and pulling meaning and emotion from […]
At Platinum Dance Center in Edina, Minnesota, Talya Dozois runs the competitive dance program like clockwork: organizing the team’s attendance at a minimum of four regional competitions every year, choreographing 10 to 12 solos and six group routines, bringing in guest choreographers and coaching dancers one-on-one. Her role as competition artistic director is a full-time […]
Boross studied extensively with jazz legend Matt Mattox, wrote his master’s thesis on Mattox’s career and has been a professor in six university dance programs. Here, he teaches one of Mattox’s codified warm-up exercises.
The National Dance Education Organization’s first “Jazz Dance: Roots and Branches in Practice” conference is happening at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, July 31–August 3. The four-day conference contains movement workshops of a variety of jazz styles and in-depth panel discussions that cover jazz dance’s past, present and future. Special guest presenters include […]
When Giordano Dance Chicago’s Joshua Blake Carter was in high school, he took jazz from Emily Yewell-Volin. Years later, he can still vividly recall the time she helped him with a particularly tricky step. “She had us do a tombé coupé jeté, landing on the front leg to go into an inside pirouette,” Carter says. “I […]