TimothĂŠe Chalamet's Jazz Dance-Related Chronological Blindness, Part II
Somewhere between TimothĂŠe Chalamet waxing poetic about the (dying art form of) ballet on CNN in late February 2026 and Alexandra Villarrealâs HuffPo deep-dive on Maddie Zieglerâs rhinestone empire in February 2015, America collectively shrugged at jazz danceâs roots like it was last seasonâs TikTok trend.
Itâs like watching a dance competition where every routine is a Frankenstein mashup of ballet, lyrical, and whatever the choreographer vaguely remembers from the FIG World Cup 2018 in Pesaro, Italy, all performed by teenagers with more hairspray than historical context. American dance culture has this weird habit of treating ballet like itâs the Holy Grail, competition contemporary like itâs profound, and commercial choreography like itâs the pinnacle of creativity â never mind that most of it borrows from jazz vocabulary without ever bothering to credit the Black artists who invented it.
The result? A sea of technically proficient dancers who can whip out a fan kick like itâs nothing but couldnât tell you where it came from if their rhinestone-encrusted lives depended on it. Chalametâs whole âDo people even care about ballet?â spiel and Villarrealâs Ziegler-mania both accidentally stumbled into the same cultural blind spot (Maraming salamat po, CS Lewis.): Americans love dance when itâs shiny, viral, or attached to a celebrity, but ask them to trace its lineage and suddenly itâs like watching a toddler try to explain tax law.
Ballet gets reduced to âpretty but boring,â competition dance gets mistaken for innovation, and jazz? And I mean ROOTED JAZZ? Jazz gets treated like that one relative at Thanksgiving who everyone vaguely acknowledges but no one actually listens to.
Meanwhile, the American competition-industrial complex churns out dancers like a factory, pumping out kids who can turn like tops and leap like gazelles â just donât ask them about Mura Dehn, Talley Beatty, Donald McKayle, Eleo Pomare, Louis Johnson, Dianne McIntyre, Fred Benjamin, and Alice Barker unless you want to witness the worldâs most awkward silence. Itâs a paradox: weâre a global dance powerhouse, yet our public discourse has the depth of a competition routine set to (shudders) "Le Jazz Hot."
Letâs be realâwhen TimothĂŠe Chalamet waxes poetic about ballet and Alexandra Villarreal frames dance like itâs just sparkly costumes and TikTok trends, itâs painfully clear Americaâs dance literacy is hovering somewhere between So You Think You Can Dance and a toddlerâs jazz-hands debut at a suburban recital. Forget rooted jazz traditions; most folks think the Charleston was invented by a Disney Channel choreographer. But Shannon Dooling-Cain swooped in like a guardian angel of rhythm, tossing out advice so good it could resurrect Josephine Baker from her grave.
Ditch the couch and actually go watch dance that doesnât involve toddlers in sequined bikinis shuffling to Xtina's "But I Am a Good Girl." (Aye-sos!) Real, sweaty, Filipino streetdance battles? Yes. That underground Lindy Hop collective? Absolutely. Show Villarreal, Chalamet, and other non-dance audiences that dance isnât just a backdrop for indie films â itâs a living, breathing thing, and weâre all invited.
Join every dance org you can findâ Dance/USA, NDEO, Dance MetroDC â because nothing says âwe mean businessâ like a bunch of dance nerds storming city hall with tap shoes. Strength in numbers, baby. Then, teach like your life depends on it. No apologizing for actually knowing your stuff.
Explain why it's better to stick with a double outside turn rather than a quadruple one and why the Camel Walks have more history than the entire Dance Moms franchise. And hey, if little Timmy doesnât get a plastic trophy for his interpretive robot dance, heâll survive. 86 the Insta-famous choreographer du jour and book the brilliant Lindy Hop elder who can trace jazz steps back to the Savoy Ballroom. Extra credit if they side-eye you for calling it âvintageâ instead of âsacred.â Fame is fleeting, but a solid shish-ka-boom-ba? Thatâs forever.
For starters, one ought to devour books on dance history like theyâre stale protein bars left in a studio locker â necessary, if not always delicious. Study teaching manuals until your eyes cross, because nothing screams âprepared professionalâ like muttering pedagogy terms in your sleep.
And for heavenâs sake, take a class in some obscure style youâve never tried â preferably one where the instructor insists on calling moves by their original 1920s slang, just to keep you humble. (Solo Lindy classes do JUST THAT.)
As for books on jazz dance history, Lewis wasn't wrong when he said he wrote: "None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill."
"The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us."
"Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."
Take, for instance, the evolution of jazz dance â saga more dramatic than a reality TV show about rival dance crews. These days, youâll see competition "jazz dance" routines set to Whitney Houston's "I'm Your Baby Tonight" where dancers hit 200-degree leg tilts so sharp they could slice through the existential dread of a Monday morning, all while glittering in bedazzled bra tops and briefs over bare legs that sparkle brighter than the questionable life choices made backstage during Nutcracker season.
Compare that to the early â90s, when New Jack Swing ruled the scene with moves so smooth they made Vanilla Iceâs hairline look intentional, and Kid âNâ Playâs high-top fades seemed like the pinnacle of human achievement. Oh, and they are much closer to the trunk of the jazz dance tree than the rather hackneyed sequence containing umpteen grandes pirouettes a la secondes en relevĂŠs.
A historical costume for a routine set to "I'm Your Baby Tonight" in 1991 consisted of modest skirted biketards stretched over tan tights â garments so sturdy they couldâve doubled as armor in a medieval battle. Now? Bare legs and excessive rhinestones on a "bikini" reign supreme, which is great until you realize how many sequins end up embedded in your couch like tiny, judgmental reminders of your costume budget.
But hereâs the kicker (and not the kind you do in a series of Apple Jacks): studying old jazz forms isnât just nostalgia for those of us who remember dial-up internet and the tragic fashion of mesh shirts.
When Lindsay Guarino and Wendy Oliver were piecing together Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches in late 2013, they uncovered chronological blind spots so glaring they couldâve been spotted from the cheap seats at a Broadway theater.
Guarino and Oliver admitted in the preface of Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century, "We first found ourselves entrenched in conversations about racism and ownership while collaborating on (the first book). These conversations were frequent among the authors of the book and gained momentum in the years that followed."
"While some people believed that jazz cannot be considered jazz unless it reflects and embodies its West African roots and the African American experience, others felt that jazz is fluidly evolving and can exist free of limitations. Tangential perspectives weighed the use of jazz music, the presence of ballet versus vernacular movement vocabulary, and whether or not social and improvisational aspects are central to its form."
It turns out, the history of jazz dance â like the plot of most dance movies â is messier and more fascinating than we thought. Write to your elected officials â yes, the ones who still think arts funding means âbuying glitter for kindergartenersâ â and remind them that, as poor culturally misunderstood Chalamet once poetically mused, Earth without art is just a sad, beige rock.
We have to convince him that ballet isnât dead. That rooted jazz dance isnât dead. Theyâre just napping under layers of misinformation and questionable costume choices. Social media doesn't have to be a digital colosseum where dance routines battle for likes like gladiators fighting for their lives, except with fewer lions and more TikTok transitions. But what if we, the enlightened scroll-scrollers of the internet, could wield our thumbs for something nobler than just double-tapping another over-choreographed high school dance squad performance?
Imagine, if you will, a world where every time someone posts the latest viral routine â including the winning D1 jazz routines one would see at the Universal Dance Association College Dance Team Nationals at Walt Disney World â a dance teacher who knows her jazz dance history casually drop a link in the comments to a grainy black-and-white clip of Al Minns, Leon James, and Frankie Manning tearing up the floor with the Tranky Doo like itâs 1943 and the rent is due.
This isnât just about nostalgia, mind you. Itâs about what Lewis called letting âthe clean sea breeze of the centuries blow through our minds.â Granted, Lewis was talking about books, but the principle holds: sometimes the past has moves so slick they make the present look like itâs dancing in molasses.
Take January 2024, for instance, when Minnesotaâs own Governor Tim Walz and the members of Aerosmith (yes, Steven Tylerâs crew) collectively lost their minds over the University of Minnesota Dance Team's D1A routine set to âDream On,â declaring it âbadassâ and urging them to âdance on.â A fine sentiment!
But what if, in the middle of that digital applause, someone had slipped in a video of the Savoy Ballroom legends doing the Lindy Hop like their shoes were on fire? Would the world have imploded? Probably not. But it mightâve given a few people pause before they crowned the next ârevolutionaryâ routine.
Now, before you accuse me of suggesting we chain Chalamet to a chair and force him to watch The Spirit Moves on loop until he can Lindy Hop in his sleep (though⌠tempting), let me clarify. This isnât about coercionâitâs about context.
Think of it like Historically-Informed Performance (HIP) for dance. You know, those musicians (GINORMOUS shoutout to Les Talens Lyriques for clapping back at Chalamet) who dust off 300-year-old treatises to play Handel's Messiah like itâs 1742 and the harpsichord tuner is running late? Yeah, them. Theyâve got the right idea.
And dance educators could stand to take a pageâ or, more accurately, a frame â from their playbook. Why not pair that flashy new competition routine with a clip of Laura Glaess breaking down classic jazz steps, or Ksenia Parkhatskaya from Secrets of Solo showing how the old-school cats did it with twice the style and half the pyrotechnics?
Lewis, ever the sage, once quipped, âIt is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones."
Apply that ratio to dance, and suddenly the algorithm starts looking a lot more interesting. For every three videos of university dance teams vying for UDA Nationals glory or the latest videos from littlelovelydancers, CarmoDance, or KidDancersonYT, throw in a video Lindy Hop performance â something with sweat, soul, and maybe a stray fedora flying mid-air. (See resources below.)
That leads us to talk about mentoring young dancers â not just correcting their pirouettes or teaching them how to count music. No, the real work is helping them see beyond the rhinestone-studded dystopia of youth dance competitions, where the choreography often has all the cultural depth of a grocery store muffin.
But hereâs the thing â you donât just shrug and say, âKids these days.â You sit them down, show them clips of the Nicholas Brothers defying gravity in Stormy Weather, or Katherine Dunham turning anthropology into art, and watch their eyes widen like theyâve just discovered a secret door in their own house. Then you counter the inevitable chorus of, âBut my competition solo needs more tricks!,â with the gentle reminder that artistry isnât measured by how many grandes pirouettes a la secondes en releves you can do without passing out.
And when some judge at StarPower Nationals tells them their grounded, polyrhythmic piece âlacks energy,â you hand them a metaphorical (or literal) cup of tea and remind them that Elvis Presleyâs hip swings were once considered âvulgarâ too. History tends to recycle its nonsense.
Throw $20 at that indie dance collective performing in a converted laundromat. Why? Because somewhere, a choreographer is duct-taping their shoes back together while arguing with a venue owner who thinks âmodern danceâ means So You Think You Can Dance rejects. Your cash isnât just funding their next piece; itâs a middle finger to the idea that art only matters if itâs algorithm-approved. Plus, imagine their faces when they realize a stranger actually paid to see their weird, wonderful vision instead of demanding another Shaping Sound knockoff.
Then thereâs collaboration â the magical act of remembering that jazz dance didnât evolve in a vacuum. Team up with musicians who still believe in live instruments, not just pre-recorded tracks that sound like a robotâs idea of âgroovy.â (Wherein back in 2015 Youth Protection Association in Dance discovered that 87% of the dancers they'd surveyed watched MVs of their routine music and only 6% of them sought parental permission, this is such a good idea.)
Better yet, find a big band. Remind people that Benny Goodman hiring Teddy Wilson wasnât just a jazz milestone â it was a middle finger to segregation wrapped in a killer clarinet solo.
And while youâre at it, partner with disabled dancers. Not as âinspiration porn,â but because excluding them from stages is as absurd as saying you canât dance if your shoes donât have taps. Co-host workshops with that studio across townâthe one youâve been low-key side-eyeing because their âcontemporaryâ routine looks suspiciously like interpretive lawn mowing. Surprise! They might teach you something too, like how to actually stretch without groaning like a haunted house door.
The goal isnât to homogenize; itâs to prove that dance thrives when itâs a conversation, not a monologue shouted over a bass drop.
Which brings us to the elephant in the room: the viralification of art. When Chalamet (bless his heart) implies that legacy arts are irrelevant, or when Villarreal dismisses traditional forms as âboring,â theyâre not just wrong â theyâre stuck in the same amnesiac loop that convinces people to eat Tide Pods.
But guess what? The Royal Ballet isnât selling out theaters because of TikTok challenges. Jazz isnât taught worldwide because some influencer did a âjazzyâ routine in a crop top. These forms survive because theyâre alive â pulsing with history, rebellion, and the kind of depth that doesnât fit in a 15-second clip.
So yes, fight for the kid who thinks artistry means contorting into a human pretzel for applause. Fight for the local company performing in a parking garage. And most of all, fight the idea that dance is just content.
Because the punchline? Those â14 cents in viewershipâ will vanish faster than a Snapchat story.
And maybe in the not-too-distant future, weâll see a glimmer of hope. Picture it: youth dancers actually doing vernacular jazz steps (gasp!), clad in early 1950s blouses tucked under swing dresses and proper character shoes, grooving to Natalie Coleâs 1991 big-band cover of "Orange-Colored Sky." What a sight that would be.
National Jazz Museum in Harlem: https://www.youtube.com/@NationalJazzMuseuminHarlem
Miller Daurey: https://www.youtube.com/@BackToGreat/videos
Okurut George: https://www.youtube.com/@okurutgeorge
Secrets of Solo: https://www.youtube.com/@secretsofsolo
Laura Glaess: https://www.youtube.com/@LauraGlaess
iLindy: https://www.youtube.com/@iLindy