The steps that made Michael Jackson great

ven without the moonwalk, Michael Jackson was one of the 20th century’s best dancers.

It didn’t matter that his vocabulary — the steps often fed to him by choreographers including Michael Peters (Thriller, Beat It) and Jeffrey Daniel (Bad, Smooth Criminal) — was largely inherited. He adapted moves so inventively and performed them so electrifyingly, he made them his own.

Even before he was a teenager, Jackson’s stage antics drew from a chorus line of legendary song-and-dance men. In his lithe body, R&B influences (Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown, Elvis Presley) went muscle to muscle with bits from musical theater (Bob Fosse, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly) and hip-hop. He referenced West Side Story and Saturday Night Fever, too.

But even when he grabbed his crotch, Jackson wasn’t wicked like Brown or funny like Fosse. He wasn’t suave like Astaire or carefree like Kelly. His spins, tight as tornados and without wind-ups, were fueled by fury.

The pose that began his performance of Billie Jean — fedora at his forehead, one hip cocked back, the other leg bent forward with the foot perched over the big toe? Pure Fosse, from The Pajama Game number Steam Heat, created in 1954. (Ditto the stiff-legged, knee-locking shuffle; the circling stomps with one foot anchored; the wide-legged jump in place.)

Yet magic clicked in 1983 when Jackson performed his first moonwalk as he sang Billie Jean on the made-for-TV special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. In an interview last week with National Public Radio, Daniel said he and Jackson adapted the move from a backslide by the Electric Boogaloos, a street dance group from the late 1970s. Perhaps the Boogaloos had seen the Nicholas Brothers do it in tap shoes in 1937.

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