Professional Jazz Dancers in France Navigate a World of Challenges and Opportunities

Hélène Paquet

Jazz dance is hugely popular in France, except in the professional dance world. With a dearth of companies specializing in the style, jazz-trained dancers starting their careers are often forced to adapt to different aesthetics and industries. With career possibilities ranging from contemporary performance to popular entertainment, jazz dancers are proving versatile, if somewhat invisible.

With its swaying steps, isolation of body parts, and expressive, acrobatic gestures, jazz is one of the most popular styles for amateur dancers in France. And yet, the number of professional jazz dance companies in the country is vanishingly few, and jazz dance performances are essentially absent from performance venues nationwide. Nonetheless, several dance schools, including the publicly funded Pôle Supérieur Paris Boulogne-Billancourt (PSPBB), offer professional training courses for dancers specializing in jazz. This begs the question: where are these young dancers headed once they’ve graduated?

The Armstrong jazz ballet, founded by Géraldine Armstrong, and Patricia Karagozian’s PGK company are among the handful of professional jazz dance companies in France. But these organizations, none of which can match the size of the major contemporary dance companies, can only employ a small proportion of professional dancers trained in jazz – for example, the PSPBB train about eighteen students per class, two years out of three. Most of them, therefore, have to find a job elsewhere.

“These dancers can be hired by contemporary choreographers,” says Frédérique Seyve, the head of curriculum at the Centre Chorégraphique Calabash near Lyon, a multidisciplinary dance school marked by the style of its director, jazz choreographer Wayne Barbaste. “Today, everything is very hybrid,” remarks Seyve. “Aesthetics circulate and permeate each other Jazz dancers tend to gravitate towards companies that focus on movement or a commitment to social issues, rather than contemporary companies with more conceptual approaches.”

Many jazz-trained dancers can thrive in contemporary dance companies, without feeling like they’re abandoning their artistic roots. Anka Postic is one of them. He graduated from the PSPBB in 2023, is currently dancing in contemporary choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira’s Fantasie minor, and is scheduled to join the Émoi company, which specializes in jazz. For him, moving from one style to another is perfectly natural. In fact, these multiple influences are precisely what creates his identity as a dancer. “In each piece I’ve worked on, I’ve tried to draw on my own style, which is hugely influenced by jazz. At the end of the day, you always find your place in a piece, in the space of freedom the choreographer gives you. Doing something other than jazz isn’t a disappointment for me, and I don’t think anyone around me thinks that either,” he explains.

Musical theatre has been connected to jazz dance since the 1940’s, and the entertainment industry is also a major source of employment for jazz-trained dancers, whether it’s with hugely successful shows like The Lion King, or working at Disneyland or on board cruise ships. “That doesn’t mean it’s not thoughtful, high-quality work,” says Seyve. “Some artists don’t want to hear about entertainment, while others were born for it, want to do it, and will do it all their lives. And then there are those who need to eat and go ‘why not?’. Cabaret also offers opportunities, even outside well-known Parisian venues like Madame Arthur. “There are cabarets outside Paris that work well. They tend to be small structures, but they’re very well established locally,” points out Nathalie Moreno, advisor of studies at the PSPBB’s dance department.

Although Seyve insists on the diversity of career tracks, she also observes that students generally worry about future employability. “We have to be honest, some of them get a bit depressed, wondering what they’re going to do with their jazz training, if they’re really going to go on with it.” But as Moreno points out, many are first and foremost jacks-of-all-trades. “We have graduates who get employment contracts in many different genres, and who don’t feel torn between these different styles.” Some also find a complementary path outside of dancing for others. “They’re performers in a company, but they’re also choreographers; they want to create their own company, find their own style... Or teach.”

Versatility and curiosity are practically written into the DNA of jazz, and many dancers naturally train in other disciplines. “The history of our art has always been that of a mixture of many different cultures, African, classical...” notes Postic, who himself moves with ease from jazz to hip-hop. “I’ve done contemporary at the Opéra Comique in the morning, then taken a cab to dance cabaret at the Paradis Latin in the evening,” says Patricia Alzetta with a smile, recalling her own career. The director of the PSPBB’s dance department tries to convey this versatility in her training, which includes singing and tap as well as Horton classes (a modern American technique used by the Alvin Ailey company), and hip-hop workshops.

For Seyve, who is also conducting doctoral research into how jazz dance is taught, this circulation of dancers and teachers in the choreographic space helps to bring to the stage a “jazz energy” that is not always identified as such. “Take [contemporary choreographer] Jean-Claude Gallotta, for example. He now admits to being influenced by jazz dance in his work. Or [France-based Israeli choreographer] Sharon Eyal: all the bodies are in profile, the wrists are broken...”. Seyve smiles: “Doesn’t that remind you of a certain Bob Fosse?”

Hélène Paquet is a freelance journalist. She works mainly on gender and equality issues, online cultures and dance, which is a passion of hers and which she has been practicing since childhood. She is also a doctoral student in sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where she has been studying media coverage of LGBT+ issues since the late 1990s.

Fantasie minor 
Choreography: Mar­co da Sil­va Ferreira
November 20 at Théâtre le passage, Fécamp
February 6, 2025 at Quatrain, Haute-Goulaine
February 27 and 28, 2025 at Quartz, scène nationale, Brest during DansFabrik festival

Calabash dance school
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Jazz dance course at the PSPBB
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