Tim Cain column: Jackson made music a visual art
Leave it to someone who doesn't appreciate dance as an art form as much as he should to underestimate the importance of Michael Jackson's dancing to his legacy.
As we inch closer to the release of "Michael Jackson: This Is It," which will feature tapes of rehearsals of what was to be Jackson's series of performances at England's 02 Arena, one imagines the film might well cement Jackson's dancing legacy.
That's a legacy this writer essentially ignored when writing about Jackson after his late-June death.
Which, in its own way, stands to reason. The videos and live performances were spectacular, sure. Jackson made his part of his reputation as a mini-mimic of dancers like James Brown and Jackie Wilson, and he went on to revolutionize the dance world.
But my way of looking at Jackson's world was that his dancing was nothing without the music. It was his blend of rock, pop, jazz, heavy metal, disco and world music that made the dancing videos possible.
To others, however, that music was merely the soundtrack for his dancing.
This became clear to me while reading the assessments of Jackson's career by those who followed in his footsteps. To many of the performers influenced by Jackson, his dancing was what made him a superstar. Lots of people had made music, these performers reasoned. Jackson stepped it up by doing things with his feet and body that no one had ever seen.
In a post mere hours after Jackson's death, August Brown of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
"Artists such as Justin Timberlake, Usher, Chris Brown and Ne-Yo ascended the pop charts because of their excellent songs. But they became superstars because they dropped your jaw when you watched them."
The thought became more clear to me at Decatur Celebration, watching the Debbie's Dance Studio students perform the "Thriller" dance throughout the weekend. Hundreds of people gathered to watch the students each time, and watching the reaction of the crowd was almost as much fun as watching the students. Especially watching those who would begin dancing Jackson-style as they walked away.
Even watching the Celebration performances by Rico, a good but not great Jackson impersonator, had to leave even the most dance-ignorant among us (i.e., me) with the indelible thought that only Michael Jackson could have originated those steps.
As Brown points out in his blog, Jackson (and the advent of music videos) forced solo male pop music performers to do something no musician in any other form must do. If you're going to have a successful music career as a man now, you've got to be able to dance. And fairly remarkably.
Christopher Cross wouldn't have had a chance in this market.
You don't have to be a fan of Jackson's, or even a fan of dance, to see the result of his accomplishments. You don't even have to be a fan of how success in music was defined in the wake of Jackson's success.
But all of us, me included, have to recognize that his life changed a lot of things about music, and much of that isn't going to change back.
timcain@herald-review.com|421-6908
Posted in Local, Cain on Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:30 am Updated: 3:34 pm.
