Re-remembering the (Almost) Lost Jazz Dances of 1980s Britain

Abstract

A case is made to consider, through the historical process of re-remembering, the styles of jazz dancing practiced in clubs in Great Britain in the early 1980s as an important aspect of British dance heritage. A particular jazz dance battle that took place between dancers from the groups IDJ (I Dance Jazz) and Brothers in Jazz serves as a focus for the discussion of how a generation of dancers established hybrid British styles of virtuosic dancing. In so doing they generated new forms of dance praxis that challenge received categories bifurcating dance into social versus theatrical dancing and popular culture versus high art.