Relatively recently, jazz dance has become recognized as an artistic medium equal to other genres of concert dance, such as ballet, modern, and post-modern. Throughout the twentieth century, a path was forged by a few jazz dance pioneers who developed and codified their movement methodology and inscribed their styles on dancers. Teacher/Choreographer Gus Giordano is considered a ground-breaking figure in helping to elevate jazz dance as a serious art form by systematizing a technical training program and establishing a concert jazz dance company in Evanston, Illinois. His "American" dance style borrows from traditional sources like ballet and modern, with a close connection to components of the African aesthetic, which imprint on it markers of authority, presence, strength, connection to the ground, directness, speed, sensuality and vitality. A close reading of key elements of his technique will show how Giordano participated in a dynamic and empowering rewriting of the female dancer's body, giving concert dance a sense of gender balance within an aesthetic that includes gender difference.