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• jazz dance
  jazz dance

  noun

  a dance form or dance that is matched to the rhythms and techniques of jazz music, developed by African Americans in the early part of the 20th century.
• jazz-dance
  jazz-dance

  verb (used without object)

  to perform jazz dance.

jazz dance

¹ American  

noun

1. a dance form or dance that is matched to the rhythms and techniques of jazz music, developed by African Americans in the early part of the 20th century.

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jazz-dance ² American  

[jaz-dans, ‑-dahns] / ˈdʒæzˌdæns, ‑ˌdɑns /

verb (used without object)

jazz-danced, jazz-dancing

1. to perform jazz dance.

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Other Word Forms

• jazz dancer
  noun

Etymology

Origin of jazz dance

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

jazz dance jazz-dance jazz-danced jazz-dancing

Her music contains a mix of pop, R&B, soul, jazz, dance, and hip-hop, as anyone watching her dazzling Glastonbury performance in the summer will have seen.

From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2025

Maurice studied ballet, African and Dunham Technique as well as studying with modern maestro Alvin Ailey and jazz dance innovator Frank Hatchett.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2024

Figgins and Curtis Holland, who teaches tap at Ballet Tech, created a sweet dance battle; the dancers were split into two groups, one dedicated to tap, the other to jazz dance.

From New York Times ● Jun. 11, 2023

Truly great art forms like the spirituals, the blues, jazz, dance and Black forms of worship.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 18, 2022

He had the reputation of being peppery tempered, therefore she walked into the room to take her first lesson with her heart performing a sort of jazz dance under her jersey.

From A Popular Schoolgirl by Balliol Salmon

Sometimes, she would accompany her students to jazz-dance competitions and wonder where the serious ballet students and teachers were.

From New York Times ● Apr. 16, 2019

But it was Ms. Mitchell, a former public-relations director working as Schramm’s assistant, who pushed the squad to new heights and refined its jazz-dance style.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 4, 2016

Some sort of horrific monobrowed jazz-dance Kevin Rowland.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 4, 2012

Maybe once she’d dreamed of jazz-dance stardom, roses heaped on her Capezios, but keeping it real and teaching cardio ballet constituted triumphs enough.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 25, 2011

The kids who jazz-dance the night away are moving from the gut and the torso; those powerful thrusts began in her works.

From Time Magazine Archive

Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite of five rooms and three baths, jazz-danced on the same cabaret floor with her granddaughters.

From The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story by Edward J. (Edward Joseph Harrington) O'Brien

He would talk to me for hours about them, though I know about as much of bells as Nebuchadnezzar knew about jazz-dancing.

From Here, There and Everywhere by Lord Frederick Spencer Hamilton