A new book published this month by University Press of Florida includes a chapter by Associate Professor of Dance Karen Hubbard. Hubbard’s “Valuing Cultural Context and Style: Strategies for Teaching Traditional Jazz Dance from the Inside Out" appears as Chapter 15 in Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Lindsay Guarino, Carlos R.A. Jones, and Wendy Oliver. The chapter originated as an article for the Journal of Dance Education.
Hubbard, who has danced on Broadway, television, and film, is a noted jazz dance scholar. In 2014, her article, “The Authentic Jazz Dance Legacy of Pepsi Bethel,” appeared in the book Jazz Dance: The History of its Roots and Branches and in 2020 she was featured in a documentary about the history of jazz dance, Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance.
Hubbard came to UNC Charlotte in 1986, developing the course “Vintage Jazz,” a dance curriculum that delivers the movement vocabulary and the context of traditional jazz dance as evolving from African American culture.
“After my New York professional training/performing career, as a grad student at The Ohio State University, I began evolving curricula that focused on jazz dance primarily as a first-half of the 20th century entertainment form,” she says. “My goal as an educator has been to help students embody jazz styles and to understand jazz dance – what it was, what it is, and what it may become.”
Hubbard will retire from UNC Charlotte at the end of this semester.