Among the Romans, the acceptance of dance by the government was declining. Until 200 BC the dance was part of Roman processions and festivals. However, from 150 BC Roman all dance schools closed their doors because the Roman nobility that the dance was considered suspicious activity and even dangerous. However, the strength of the movement did not stop and under the reign of Emperor Augustus (63 BC 14 AD) came a dance form known today as mime or pantomime in which the communication is without words, through stylized gestures and movements and became non-verbal language in multicultural Rome. The Christianization of the Roman Empire ushered in a new era in which the body, sexuality and dance were united and were the subject of controversy and conflict.

Dance in the middle Ages

The attitude of the Christian Church to dance, from the fourth century and throughout the Middle Ages was ambivalent. On one side we find the rejection of dance as a catalyst for sexual permissiveness, licentiousness and ecstasy by Church leaders such as S. Augustine (354-430) whose influence continued throughout the Middle Ages. Moreover, ancient Fathers of the Church tried to incorporate the dances peculiar to the northern tribes, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Gauls .. Christians in worship. Seasonal celebration dances were often incorporated into Christian holidays to coincide with ancient rites at the end of Winter and celebration of fertility with the arrival of Spring. In the early ninth century Charlemagne forbade dancing, but the command was not respected. The dance continued as part of the religious rites of the peoples of Europe though disguised with new names and new purposes.

During this time there arose a secret dance called the dance of death, prompted by the ban of the church and the emergence of the Black Death. Originally created as a secret and ecstatic dance during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the dance of death began in response to the Black Death that killed more than 50 million people in 200 years. This dance spread from Germany to Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and has been described as a dance based on jumps in and yells which convulsed with rage to throw body disease.
The Renaissance and the birth of the Ballet

The advent of the Renaissance brought a new attitude towards the body, art and dance. The courts of Italy and France became the center of new developments in dance through the patrons to dance teachers and musicians who created large-scale social dances that allowed the proliferation of celebrations and festivities. At the same time the dance became the subject of serious study and a group of intellectuals calling themselves the Pleiades worked to recover the ancient Greek theater, combining music, sound and dance. In the court of Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), wife of Henry II Italian were born the first forms of Ballet master of the brilliant Beauyeulx Baldassare. In 1581, Balthazar led the first court ballet, a dance which has idealized the story of a mythical legend combining spoken texts, assembling and elaborates costumes and stylized dance group. In 1661 Louis XIV of France authorized the establishment of the first Royal Academy of Dance. In the centuries following the ballet became a formal artistic discipline and was adapting to the changing political and aesthetic of the time. The partner social dances like the minuet and the waltz began to emerge as dynamic performances of greater freedom and expression.
In the nineteenth century, the era of romantic ballet reflected the cult of the ballerina and the struggle between the earthly world and the spiritual world that transcend the earth, exemplified in works such as Giselle (1841), Swan Lake (1895), and Nutcracker (1892). At the same time, the political powers of Europe colonized Africa, Asia and Polynesia where banned and persecuted the dances and drums considering them crude and sex. This lack of dance in other cultures seems to change at the end of World War I and the dances of African and Caribbean origin create new forms of dance in Europe and America.

Dance in the Twentieth Century

After World War I, the arts in general do a serious questioning of values and seek new ways to reflect individual expression and a way of life more dynamic. In Russia there’s a renaissance of ballet led by the most brilliant choreographers, composers, visual artists and designers. People worked in this company as Anna Pavlova, Claude Debussy, Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso … Parallel to the revolution arose Ballet the first manifestations of modern dance. In reaction to the stylized movements of ballet and the gradual emancipation of women was a new way of dancing that promoted free expression. One of the pioneers of this movement was Isadora Duncan. As the dance was gaining ground, was breaking all the rules.
From the 20s to the present day new freedoms in the movement of the body was the trigger for the change in attitudes toward the body. The music with Latin influences, African and Caribbean inspired the proliferation of dance halls and dances like the rumba, samba, tango or cha cha cha. The revival of Harlem aparicón led to the other dances like the lindy hop or jitterbug. From the 50s took over more individualistic other dances such as rock and roll, twist and the so-called free-style, then came the disco dancing, breakdancing … Dance, capitalized, remains part of our lives as it did in our ancestors. It’s something that evolves with the times but is inherent to human nature.

If you need to ask what jazz, you will not ever know. – Louis Armstrong

Jazz must have “that thing”. You must be born with it. You can not even buy it. If I could buy, they were on sale at the next Newport festival. – Miles Davis

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains. – Paul Whiteman

New Orleans is the only place I know where when you ask a child what he wants to be and instead of saying “I want to be a policeman” or “I want to be a fireman,” he says, I want to be a musician. “- Alan Jaffe
The etymology of the word jazz is unknown, but the great Dizzy Gillespie jasi said that, in an African dialect, means “living at a fast pace.” Paradoxically, those who will know will be the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, directed by Nick La Rocca, orchestra musicians born whites in New Orleans, which incisero in the first disc in 1917 in New York. The son of La Rocca told the first tour of ODJB in New York, during which the posters advertising their evenings have been altered by buontemponi del’epoca as follows: delete the letter “J” from the phrase “Jass Band” for her become “Ass Band,” which in English means “sit” or “seat of the band.” Later they had to change the word “Jass” to “Jazz.”

Enslaved blacks, deported from 1500 to 1865, met with the Europeans arrived to colonize the Americas, and from the ground forces of a people regarded as instinctive (Africans) and the vision born of the Western classical Greece and Germanic flourished from the world a new cultural form based on the creativity and conviviale instinctiveness on improvisation, vocal and instrumental.

In the southern U.S. blacks slaves maintained associated with their music and especially singing, musical instruments brought from Africa, especially the drums, were in fact confiscated because whites believed that they were used to communicate and to incite rebellion . The songs, work songs, songs of the plantation, they had to win the living condition of inferiority and subjection to which they were forced and not to forget his identity as the black codes (codes for the blacks) had them private. The musical tradition of Africa was linked to events of daily life and agricultural and pastoral event of war.

The European tradition provided the impetus to draw from other musical forms: the classical music, religious songs, folk songs, dance music, marches, the opera, and musical instruments from piano to wind instruments. Among the sacred music borrowed, an example is Oh Tannenbaum, later adapted to travel in style and played jazz with the title of Maryland, My Maryland.

The negro spirituals arose from religious traditions formed during slavery. The choral music was deeply charged with emotion and often melancholic, structure of polyrhythm. The texts are almost always the topic of religion:
“Oh, when the saints, go marching in / Oh, when the saints, go marching in / Oh Lord, I want to be in that number / When the saints, go marching in”
(Oh when the Saints come / marching “into your kingdom”, / Oh, Lord, I want to be together)
Oh when the sun begins to shine, when the sun begins to shine. Oh I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.
Oh when the moon goes down in blood, when the moon goes down in blood …..
Oh when the horn, begins to sound …..
Oh when the rev – elation comes …..
Oh when the day, of judgment comes ….

Religion was a source of common strength, hope that everyone in heaven would have the freedom that God had freed from slavery to black people.
“Joshua fit the battle of Jerico, Jerico, Jerico / Joshua fit the battle of Jerico, and the walls came tumbling down”
(Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho / Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls collapsed)

This song evokes the taking of Jericho by Joshua and the army of Israel that, according to the Biblical legend with only the sound of trumpets they made the walls collapse.
“I’m gonna lay down my sword and Shield, down by the riverside, / down by the riverside, down by the riverside, / I’m gonna lay down my sword and Shield, down by the riverside, / is not gonna study war no more ”
(Give up my sword and shield, along the river, / along the river, along the river / give up my sword and shield, along the river, / and I will never again war).

This is part of spiritual jazz traditional folkloric orally handed down that you do not know neither the author nor the date of composition. The argument is peace among the peoples and the song was used during the years of war in Vietnam by folk singers Americans.

The best blues or country blues developed after 1863 in states along the Mississippi delta. The Bluesmen were farmers who after work entertained friends accompanying himself rudimentary guitars built by themselves. The blues generally has a structure of 12 bars, which in some cases becomes 8 or 16 bars or more, the diatonic scale which is altered in the 3rd and 7th grade – called “blues scale”. The blues voice and frank and direct, may be the atmosphere of despair, cynicism or satire. The urban blues (blues urban) led instead dall’emigrazione Bluesmen of the country to the cities of the North. In Ananais song, a blues than 16 bars, the argument is religious spiritual
“Ananais, Ananais, / tell me what kind of man Jesus is / spoke to the wind, wind stopped still / tell me what kind of man Jesus is”
(Ananais, Ananais, / tell me that man is Jesus / talked with the wind, the wind ceased to blow / tell me that man is Jesus)

The blues classic, unlike the rural and urban was more sophisticated and evolved. It was the prerogative of women singers who adorned the ostrich boa presenting shows such as the European great dive. We recall, among the most famous Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith. This marked the first disc in this style in 1920. The most important jazz musicians began precisely in the years’20 to accompany the singers for recordings and concerts. Careless Love is a classic example of the blues.

The ragtime was originally a musical genre inspired black piano. The name derives from time = time and = rag rag, rags. E ‘una musica drafted be difficult to enforce given a small group of educated blacks connoisseurs of European music. His biggest representative is Scott Joplin, musician of great black modernity, lived from 1868 to 1917. Joplin composed in 1903 A Guest of Honor and in 1911 Tremonisha, which operates in the mix ragtime, black folk music and European operetta. Gradually the ragtime was played by small bands, from band and finally by jazz groups. The Nineteen Nineteen Rag (Year 1919) is a ragtime-time ride.