Moving bodies, shifting selves: integration and incorporation through ‘jazzing’ and ‘salsa’ dance in Cape Town

Abstract

This article looks at two social couple dance forms, ‘jazz’ and salsa, the first emerging in the 1970s, and the second in the 2000s in Cape Town. The focus is on how concepts of geography, body, space, community, heritage, tradition and identity have become conflated within processes of social change. ‘Jazzing’, otherwise known as ‘Cape jazz’ dance, or ‘jazz’, danced to what is locally known as ‘jazz’ music (mostly R&B and soul ‘covers’), is associated with the apartheid-constructed ‘coloured’ community, a historically contested identity in the Western Cape. Salsa, as a globally popularised and commercialised dance form, danced to salsa music, started in central Cape Town in the early 2000s, incorporating participants from diverse backgrounds. Because of similarities in style, and the informality and fluidity of both dance forms, tensions emerged in the mid-2000s, when many jazz dancers, influenced by the local salsa scene, copied and incorporated what were described as ‘salsa moves’ into jazz routines, resulting in contestations over whether what was seen as a ‘local’ tradition was under threat. At the same time, the crossing over of dance styles and dancers between venues resulted in modes of racial integration and inclusivity within a highly segregated society. The study argues for the use of dance as a lens to explore, contest, interrogate and problematise a rapidly transforming society, and what it means to be South African today.