Jazz hands in performance dance is the extension of a performer's hands with palms toward the audience and fingers splayed. It is commonly associated with especially exuberant types of performance such as musicals, cheerleading, show choir, revue, and especially jazz dance shows. In cheerleading, the position with arms outstretched and fingers wiggling up and down is sometimes referred to as spirit fingers or jazz fingers. Depending on the performance venue, both gestures can be associated with campiness.
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Famous quotes containing the words jazz and/or hands:
“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)
“Fly-catchers of the moon,
Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem
But slender needles of bone;
Blenched by that malicious dream
They are spread wide that each
May rend what comes in reach.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)