Gr 3-4 Jazz & Tap

Jazz evolves with the times to keep current with popular culture. Throughout its history, the jazz vocabulary and style varied between regions of America and beyond. TRAC curriculum currently balances technical skill, musicality, isolations and syncopations, grounded movement and varying qualities or efforts used to create dynamic performance. At the moment, Jazz can be broken down into three streams: 1 - Vernacular Jazz, 2 - Theatrical Jazz, and 3 - Commercial Jazz, all with roots in African dance and Black culture. We include the history and styles of this widely diverse genre through age and level-specific themes and playlists that become more complex year to year.

Tap is the meeting place between music and movement. It is a percussive, intricate style of dance that stimulates the brain as much as the feet. Like Jazz, there are many styles of Tap including: Rhythmic, Broadway, Modern and Hoofing. Tap teaches cultural practices and group dynamics through call and response learning, complex coordination, and shared timing that can be picked up and fine tuned over years of group practice.