Street Jazz

Street jazz is a studio-born hybrid that grafts hip-hop and funk styling onto jazz technique, and the label is used more or less interchangeably with jazz funk; the standard reference treatment describes jazz-funk dance as a hybrid of hip-hop and jazz that is also called street jazz. The style crystallised in the early 1990s around television and music video work, notably the Fly Girls on In Living Color, choreographed by Rosie Perez, whose cast included Jennifer Lopez. What separates it from hip-hop proper is its foundation: street jazz retains jazz mechanics such as pirouettes, arabesques, releve and a lifted presentational carriage, whereas hip-hop's grounded bounce, rock and social-dance vocabulary descend from a different lineage and culture. What separates it from traditional jazz is the funk phrasing, the density of isolations and the pop and R&B soundtrack. It remains a staple class format in commercial studios worldwide and supplies much of the movement seen in music video choreography for artists from Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul onward.