Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theater

Jazz dance at the Radio City Music Hall, New York ~1947

Cover of sheet music, 1918

Jazz dance is a dance genre which is easy to recognise, but not easy to define. It is, like some other forms of dance and music, an African influence in western culture.

"[Jazz dance was] developed by African Americans in the first part of the twentieth century".

Its origins were in social dancing to the music of jazz, but it developed into a type of stage dancing.