• Embody Jazz

Self-Expression through Dance

  • Are you looking for a free and authentic way to move your body?

  • Do you resonate to jazz and swing music from the 20s, 30s and 40s?  Does it make you start tapping your feet?

  • Are you looking for a way to find your inner artist and express that?

  • Do you need an outlet for energy that’s stuck in the body?

  • Do you want a fun way to connect with others and make new friends?

What can Embody Jazz classes do for me?

Embody Jazz classes are about using the medium of jazz music and vernacular jazz movement from the 20s, 30s and 40s as a form of self-discovery and self-expression.

Jazz dance from the golden era was the authentic expression of an oppressed people. Finding freedom in the body when there was no true freedom in their life conditions, African-Americans gave us this way to move that connects viscerally to jazz music – music that was born to make you dance to the swing beat of your heart, the center of your being.

Moving in rhythm is healing and life-giving, as everything in our physiology and in our cycles of life are born of fixed rhythms. In jazz, finding that swing beat is about breathing through the movement, knowing how to be on time rather than ahead of ourselves.

We use the whole body in jazz, from our feet up to the top of our heads, so we are truly finding ways to free ourselves from the shackles of our timidity and fears of looking ridiculous, or of opening ourselves up too much to others.

Jazz asks you to get over all of that, to go deep inside yourself and find what wants to be expressed and do it.  It asks you to be authenticate with yourself, being true to what is happening in this exact moment.

Never before have we felt such necessity to be present and anchored in the here and now.  Jazz teaches us that secret, gives us that gift.

Through sound, jazz leads you to the core of yourself and says “Express that”.

Open Level

This is a mixed level of those who have absolutely no experience in this dance language or those who have a bit of knowledge but are not yet completely secure in the basics.

The focus is on basic vocabulary and understanding the musical structure to feel more and more at ease within the flow of the music.

Intermediate/ Advanced

This is an intermediate / advanced mixed class. You’ve been dancing jazz for a couple of years and can pick up new sequences easily because you don’t have to think about the basic steps. We’ll still be doing some cleanup of basics as well as working on using the whole body in a more efficient way. We’ll also expand our basics and our ideas of what’s possible within jazz vocabulary, particularly to express the music better!