This is part of my contuing attempt to come to terms with Michael Jackson’s confused legacy.
In my first post I wrote about how MH had put a face on the hidden sneak of pederasty.
Now I want to discuss how he made dance not merelt a popular and valid art form but also a democratic and utilaterian art form.
I was watching Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell dance on the first all dancing, all singing, musical The Broadway Melody of 1929 . Astaire is my favorite modern dance star (as opposed to classical). I prefer him to the more atheltic Gene Kelly. When Astaire danced he managed to move his audience from the despair of the great depression to another worldly New York – a perfection of movement and style that had him and, well, anyone he danced with Ginger Rogers often enough.
What Astaire brought through his easy watlzes through the most elegant of sets was an ease in his body that seemed to react to his thoughts with a fluidity at issue with the blunt force of poverty causing all the populations movements to be jerky, harsh, and beyond their control.
Flash forward seventy years and my great-niece Miriam was teaching me the moves to Miley Cyrus’ “Hoedown Showdown” -a do ce do at the heart of Miley’s Hannah Montana movie. What impressed me is that though the moves were a little mechanical and obvious they were also easy enough for a seven year old girl to learn. They were, in a word, utilaterian and a form of participation between the audience (in this case tween girls) and the artist. Miriam didn’t simply consume a product, she acted upon it.
Michael Jackson -who the great Astaire himself complimented as a dancer, took both forms of dance and met them in the middle. MJ’s audience emulated him on the dancefloor though MJ was such an excellent rhythmic mover, nobody could do it nearly as well.
Forget about the music and forget about the videos as videos for a moment, and watch that lithe body move from one square on the dancefloor to the other, each one lighting underneath him as his foot touched the ground. It’s swellagent, indeed.
I could never drem of dancing like Fred Astaire but I could emulate MJ -I could put on the top hat and one glove, and herk, jerk and move to the synth drums on song after song. I could, if you will, become my own MJ. And when that happens, when the empathy becomes conversion, the artist providing it is going to become hugely important.
Michael gave dance back to the masses.