Theatrical Jazz Institute: HERE
Aishah Rahman is said to have coined the term Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic in the 1970′s.
Check out Aishah Rahman talking about the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic in
Volume 1, Number 1 Spring-Summer 1999 issue of Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora.
VIEW Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic Innovators blog
Dedicated to sharing clips of some of my favorite
innovators/mentors/collaborators/history makers work in the TJA
HERE.
A very short list of Innovators in the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic
Like the Jazz Musicians back in the day…we/in the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic are all very different in our naming/approach and art practice. We/like them have varied feelings and opinions about the boxing that comes with a label – Jazz. But yet it is/for some of us at least – a convenient way to contextualize our work/and move forward with a sense of self-determination.
Check out: Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project
Edited by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Lisa L. Moore, and Sharon Bridgforth
Published by University of Texas Press HERE.The following is an excerpt from When The Ancestors Call by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Ph.D
Theatrical jazz aesthetics began to form in the early 1970s alongside the Black Arts Movement in the Sounds in Motion Harlem dance studio under the tutelage of Dianne McIntyre. Sounds in Motion became the artistic workshop for a host of legendary performance artists including Laurie Carlos, Ntozake Shange, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Marlies Yearby and musicians Cecil Taylor, Craig Harris, Sekou Sundiata, and Olu Dara, with whom McIntyre continues to create work. This work fused music/sound, dance/movement and the spoken word, was primarily initiated and perpetuated by women, relied on breath as the spiritual fire of the work, and set no limits on blackness.
A theatrical jazz aesthetic borrows many elements from the musical world of jazz—improvisation, process over product, ensemble synthesis, solo virtuosity— and disrupts the traditional conventions of Western theatre, including a single narrative with a throughline and causal relationships that rely on psychological coherence, individual characters performed singly by performers, and identifiable places and spaces. A theatrical jazz aesthetic uses gestural language as counterpoint to the verbal text. This gestural language is a blend of modern dance, contemporary dance, popular idioms, and everyday physical references. Some of the movements reflect West African aesthetics (angularity, movements that pull to the earth, unpredictable punctuation), but the modern dance foundation from McIntyre remains apparent.
Theatrical jazz is incorporative; it borrows, includes, stirs many elements into the roux. Cab Calloway’s inclusion of Yiddish instrumentation, Don Byron’s jazz sensibilities woven through Klezmer music allow jazz to reach in many directions. Similarly, composer Helga Davis brings Western classical training to the blues inspired, jazz-inflected world of delta dandi thereby bringing disparate ancestors into the space together.
A theatrical jazz aesthetic is as visual as it is oral. Productions are as much about painting the space with bodies as they are about filling the air with words. The bodies have their own stories to tell, and the performers’ visceral negotiations between their physical selves and the physical realities of the various characters enacted becomes a vital component of the experience. As suggested by such negotiation, this work is about process. It is about the humility involved in apprenticeship as one painstakingly acquires one’s own aesthetic character through the guidance of masters. It is about the performers finding their way, bringing their distinctive gifts to the work and letting those gifts ring forward through the characters, and through the breath of the company. As Bessie Award winning director/writer/performer Laurie Carlos is fond of saying, “Everything is already in the room.” Like a fine jazz ensemble, theatrical jazz relies on the confident collaboration of artists who have come to trust each other, and to trust their own creative impulses through long term repeated partnerships…
by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Ph.D
