Jazz dance : the story of American vernacular dance

"The phrase jazz dance has a special meaning for professionals who dance to jazz music (they use it to describe non-tap body movement); and another meaning for studios coast to coast teaching 'Modern Jazz Dance' (a blend of Euro-American styles that owes little to jazz and less to jazz rhythms). However, we are dealing here with what may eventually be referred to as jazz dance, and we could not think of a more suitable title. "The characteristic that distinguishes American vernacular dance--as does jazz music--is swing, which can be heard, felt, and seen, but defined only with great difficulty. . . ." --from the Introduction Many of the dancers died before the first publication of this book; neither they nor Marshall Stearns lived to see the revival and the renaissance of tap dance. This is truly sad, for Marshall would have seen his book become the Bible for the new generation of tap dancers and a reference manual for the tap masters still living who worked so diligently to pass on the tradition as well as the technique. This book gave those dancers a reference point from which to observe both their contributions to, and the history of, their form. They incorporated this history with a new self-consciousness and respect for both tap dance as an art form and the tap dancer as an artist. -- Foreword

The Story of American Vernacular Dance