African Dance has always had a feeling of excitement and the rhythmic movements and the undercurrent of the hypnotic sound of the drums only intensify that feeling. A few years ago we added Afro Jazz to our curriculum and what a success it has been. These classes are always well attended and provide a fun addition to any dance program.

Not only do they help the students with their understanding of the different rhythms, but they also provide a wonderful opportunity for you to strengthen your dancers in a fun, aerobic way. The style has to involve a lot of into the ground movement, which is so important for Jazz and at the same time develops strength and co-ordination in the upper body.

Lets take a big picture look at the benefits of teaching your dancers this type of dance:

Builds stamina. Increases strength in legs, back and abdominals. Increases breadth of port de bras. Helps to develop a better awareness of rhythm and musicality. Gives even relatively beginner dancers an avenue to be successful. Helps advanced dancers with spatial awareness and use of breath control. Gives dancer an extremely fun class during which they are able to express themselves.

Now lets look at the specifics of these benefits of Afro Jazz. Building stamina: Because the dancers have to work low to the ground, they are using the large leg muscles extensively. The port de bras are very often big and expansive and there is a lot of use of the release, contract movements. All of these combined add up to a great way to build your dancers stamina. By learning to really use their breath control while executing these movements they will not only build strength and longer-lasting stamina, but can also start to apply the same principals to other types of dancing.

So much of Afro Jazz is aerobic type movement, making it a wonderful way to give the students a great workout in a fun way.

Increases strength in legs, back and abdominals:

A big emphasis for the Afro Jazz warmup is to use a continuous series of abdominal exercises. This, of course helps with every style of dance, but for this style the constant use of contractions makes it very important for the abdominals to be in peak condition. Strengthening the legs with a series of exercises and then stretching the muscles so that those quadriceps and hamstrings are lean and mean enable the dancers to push into the ground and also to use their legs for the explosive leaps that this style requires. Back exercises include upper and lower back strengthening exercises.

Increases breadth of port de bras:

Big arm movements are an absolute must for this style of Jazz. Windmill like movements are a great way to have the dancers really feel the use of their back muscles. The fact that they have to move their arms in a fast and expansive way at times helps the dancers to understand how important the support of the back muscles is. They are then able to transport that feeling to their port de bras with any other style of dance.

Helps to develop a better awareness of rhythm and musicality:

 The distinct beat of the conga and other drums make rhythms easy to follow for beginner students, and for more advanced students all the subtleties of the underneath pulses help the dancer to listen for those important accentsand that definitely helps them with the use of phrasing in their dancing, giving better style and musicality to their movement.

Gives even relatively beginner dancers an avenue to be successful:

For dancers who do not have a lot of technical knowledge this style is a wonderful way for them to experience the joy of movement and be able to express themselves. The music has a cool sound and the technique that they learn will definitely help to strengthen their bodies.

Helps advanced dancers with spatial awareness and use of breath control:

So often when dancers are growing physically they tend to dance very small as if they were still in a small body. This style of dance by necessity needs to be danced big and much ground needs to be covered, so it is a great way to get the dancers moving and becoming much more aware spatially. They also find that by breathing through the movements and controlling their breath they are able to approach all of the movements at 100% capacity. Gives dancers an extremely fun class during which they are able to express themselves: This type of style is great fun to dance to. The music is hypnotic and the dancers can experiment with their movement and the expression which they may not feel as comfortable doing in other styles.

Simone De Paolo has presented some of her Afro Jazz syllabus on the website: check out the archives. She will also be presenting new and exciting material at the DTW Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. Learn how to teach this exciting style of dance and bring a new dimension to your classes.