Re: Where did the Moonwalk really originate?
Here here! Yes indeed.
I was looking up Bill Robinson again and found a site on You tube that has a bunch of clips of Robinson and Astaire. It is fun to watch and after watching Astaire again it just makes his comment about knowing he had a successor when he saw Michael on Motown 25 that much more meaningful.
Awesome dancer. I remember my mom having a sort of a crush on him (in a proper sort of way lol). Michael never did tap dancing after he went solo did he? It is strange, most of the early dancers did tap but you never see it anymore.
Yeah ec, I always thought Michael's style was most like Fosse's. He understands simplicity of movement in the same kind of way, clean, clear poses, being able to take the figure and put their silhouette against a lighted backdrop and make out each angle of their body perfectly. CLEAN dancing, man, people don't understand that anymore. They want to jam nine million steps in to each routine and it looks like crap.
Astaire was the best and he and Robinson actually worked together for a time, when Astaire was looking to concentrate further on hoofing then on ballet, he studied with Robinson for a while. And Michael is the only guy I would say has that much natural talent, as Astaire did. Fred had a grace to his dancing that was unsurpassed. I have tons of his films, I watch him all the time, and he was just explosively fast and had the most incredible ease. He made everyone else look lame.
It would be cool if Michael did more tap. I don't like a lot of tap because I feel that dancers that concentrate in this area a lot of the times neglect their upper body movement and that's no good to me. Somone like Astaire or Gene Kelly of course had as much concentration on their torso as on their lower body and when Michael does tap, he as well concentrates as fully on his torso. Why Michael and Astaire are so similar is because their movement comes from the center, so they've both got this perfect balance from top to bottom and it creates such an ease of movement and such perfect form and control.
Michael's done a lot of jazz dancing, in "Bad" and "TWYMMF", etc... A lot of the steps he does are jazz derived, which is why he dances so much like Fosse.
What people aren't aware of is, a lot of what Michael does IS improvised, but just like these kids that go out on the street and "improvise", its with moves that they've done before but just decide to do on the spot. So in videos like "They Don't Care About Us", the sequences in "Smooth Criminal" in between the line dances, when he hits certain spots, in "Beat It", etc... That's all improvised, I mean, Michael just hits those poses on the spot, what comes in to his mind.
Just dancing, just grooving to music, that's what Michael does. Just moving in time with the music, which is what AllforMJ is talking about I think, that would look like what he did in the video for "Blame It On The Boggie" or "Rock With You", but even still, he was hitting steps he'd done before but just decided to do without any pre-concived plan, none of that is what I would call structured or choreographed dancing, its what he feels at the time. Nobody actually ever improvises without steps they don't already know, that's a myth. Unless you go out and just move rhythmically to a beat, which is just bopping your head, moving your body to the music, not hitting any steps really.
So when people say Michael can't improvise, I have to laugh, because most of his dancing is improvosation. The end sequence in "Black and White", he had spots to hit, and I'm sure some of that was thought out, the whole controversial aspect, jumping on the side walk and kicking the glass bottle, but getting to each point, the dancing he does when he hits each spot, I'm certain is improvised.
He does a certain tap sequence every now and then, in "Smooth Criminal", "Black or White", its a repeated step he does. Every great dancer has a certain set of steps which define their style. Astaire had this spin he would do, up on one foot, twirl 2 or 3 times, with his arms held out, you know, Eleanor Powell had these tradmark spins she would do while coming foward or these kicks she would do.
Michael's got the kind of talent which allows him to take on and perform any
style, he can duplicate the
way someone moves, similar to how he can duplicat the way someone sings, in terms of phrasing, timeing, etc... He's
extremely gifted.
It would be nice for him to do more of the older styles. I like it really when Michael just has a regular dance routine that doesn't involve all these hip hop flavored forms of movement. Popping, for example, I don't really consider that to be dancing per say, I consider it to be much like pantomime in that, I see it as an entirely different form of movement from what I would define as dance. Its comes down to muscle and joint control, being able to tense each muscle individually and then release it. To me, that's not dancing. Moving from step to step, moving your limbs, torso and legs from one spot to another, that movement to me, that's dancing. Locking is what I would define as dancing, etc...
Anyway, that post is WAY too long and people must think I'm annoying since nobody cared about my over the top description of that 7 second clip I posted, lol. Wahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
