The Freedom Jazz Dance Project brings together 100 years of street dancing together, from Authentic Jazz back in the 1920s and 1930s to the urban street dances of today, all of which are firmly rooted in African-American culture. The aims of the project are to trace the roots and development of street dancing and to find their common ground and influences, as well as to break the barriers between the different “genres” of the dance and their respective music, to be inclusive rather than divisive, and mainly to celebrate vernacular dance, and acknowledge its African-American history, in all its forms and its organic nature that ties it closely to the everyday struggles, pains, joys, and victories.
The idea is to break down barriers and to re-examine the different street dance forms and how we can use that to express any emotion through any music, not necessarily “authentic” music. Some explorations have gone into putting Lindy Hop and Authentic Jazz into non-standard swing music, and soon we would be working on modern street dances to jazz music… and then some
Here are some of the performances that have been done over the years to explore the dance forms and the music.
The dancers are available for performances for your corporate events as well.
If you’re keen to understand the history and development of the dances through the century, we’re also available for demo-lectures.
Email sinclair.ang@gmail.com for more details.