in case you were wondering.

This is what jazz looks like.

It's Daniel Nagrin from his 1958 dance "Jazz: Three Ways"

One thing that's always fascinated me is the way that performers who do movement-based things relate to their clothing. What kind of frame it creates, what quality of movement it takes on, what quality of movement it gives the performer, what it adds to the character...all that. I was reading a chapter of "the body in hollywood slapstick" about the body and clothes that talked a lot about how silent comedians of the time shaped their characters with their clothes (harold lloyd's glasses, buster keaton's porkpie hat, chaplin's everything) and it was fairly interesting, but it didn't really get at what I think is interesting about it. For instance, Bert and Ernie wear vertical and horizontal stripes respectively to show that Bert is uptight and Ernie is laidback. We dressed our clowns for Noodle Doodle Box in big clothes to emphasize how small they were or small clothes to emphasize how big they were and to influence the characters' statuses.

The reason I mention all this is because in this picture of Mr. Nagrin his extremities are all twisted around facing in different directions and his jacket, with its stripes still directly facing the viewer, gives him an even more disjointed look like a toy held together with string.

I also saw this dance recently where the girl had clearly just chosen a song she liked and a dress she liked and made a lame dance with them. And I really just mention the dress because I liked it, but it didn't have anything to do with the dance. It made me mad. Because really, we can do better, people.