We are jazz dance artists, educators, and scholars.  In our early formal training,  “jazz dance” was introduced as a form of dance used in Broadway, film, concert dance, and other entertainment spaces. The training was informed by Eurocentric aesthetics and values that were deemed necessary, albeit essential to a successful career as a jazz dancer. The social and cultural origins of the form, along with its intrinsic relationship with jazz music, were either eliminated and erased, or branded inconsequential to artistic pursuit and bifurcated into a status of “less serious” dance. Our journeys collided through our research, as each of us interrogated the impacts of colonialism, capitalism, racism, and the patriarchy on Black American music and dance.  The roots (foundations) of the form led us deeper inside the music and brought us together.  One Jazz Collective honors the transformative power of rooted jazz dance, including the Black American music colloquially known as jazz, and the potential in working together in community.

We’ve been working as a collective since 2019.  Presenting at conferences together, sharing resources, and seeing and experiencing live jazz music as much as possible.  With Black American music as our guide, we’ve been teaching, creating and building in community by sharing space, letting go of ego, and embracing an improvisational spirit.   The “we” is not limited to us three, and especially includes Kimberley Cooper, Marcus Grant, and Monique Haley as close collaborators.  We also acknowledge the many conversations and creative exchanges with musicians that have offered direction and insight as we imagine a future for jazz dance that is in conversation with the music. As Marcus Grant likes to say, “This is not a radical idea, the music and the dance together.  This is how it all began.”  As one shared language, it is how we will move forward.

New Orleans, New York City, Brooklyn, Vancouver, Boston, Providence, Calgary, Newport, RI.  The same scenario played out for us again and again in jazz clubs and at festivals across North America.  Us, near the front of the audience to be close to the music and see the musicians move the music through their bodies.  The musicians, acknowledging us from the stage, or seeking us out after to question who we are.  Often, we were asked what instruments we play.  In all instances, there was an immediate sense of “knowing.”  Seeing us inside the music and responsive in our bodies fed the conversation– musician to musician and musician to audience. We were speaking a shared language – jazz music IS jazz dance.  From that energy, One Jazz Collective was born.