Our world is full of illusions. Some of them scare, others beckon and fascinate. The art of creating illusions, as you know, is the prerogative of magicians and card cheats. But a good dancer with the right qualities is able to assemble the movements into a dance in such a way that he turns it into an unforgettable spectacle that borders on fantasy. Such a great Dancer was and will remain the King of Pop Michael Jackson. " moonwalk” in his performance was forever imprinted in the memory of fans and even people far from dancing as the greatest illusion of choreography.
Birth of a legend
The first performance of the movement now known as the "moonwalk" belongs to the American jazz singer Cab Calloway and dates back to 1932. Later, other famous showmen used similar elements in their performances, including the famous French mime - Marcel Marceau. It is believed that it was his dance production of "Walking against the wind" that provided the prerequisites for the performance of this movement by Michael Jackson in his 1983 performance on the "Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever" program, which became a legend. His unique style performance glorified this element for centuries. Since then, the name of Michael Jackson, the title of the song "Billie Jean" (to which the dance was first performed) and the "moonwalk" are inseparable and symbolize the era of great dance achievements, just like the invariable attributes legendary singer and a dancer: a black hat, a white glove on one hand and socks with silver threads.
origin of name
The name "moonwalk" this dance received due to the visual lightness and smoothness of the dancer's movements. After all, science has long known that the Moon has much less gravity than our planet Earth. Therefore, the steps of a person on the moon are light, weightless and barely touch the surface of the planet. This can be seen in the frames of the first filming of the landing of people on the moon and, comparing what they saw with a dance movement, in Once again make sure that Michael Jackson's "moonwalk" has no analogues and is rightfully considered "unearthly".
Moonwalk technique
The "moonwalk" as a dance element is footwork that imitates walking forward. But as a result of a special performance technique, it looks like sliding backwards, as if something is pulling the dancer in reverse side. The movement is an alternate change in the positions of the legs: from the toe to the full foot and vice versa. To achieve the effect of smooth sliding, you need to move your foot back without lifting it off the floor and without lifting your heel. When the toes of the sliding foot are at the level of the foot standing on the toe, the latter falls on the entire foot, and the first rises to the toe. This change of position occurs throughout the movement. Needed to perfect the technique good plastic and speed. After working out this element, movements of the shoulders and head are connected. Now it's a real moonwalk. But in order to achieve a decent level of its implementation, you will have to spend more than one month in the training room in front of the mirror.
Who is the ancestor of the "moonwalk" that brought fame to Michael Jackson? "Moonwalk" performed by Cab Calloway, James Brown,.
She is “sliding back”, “glide” (eng. moonwalk) - a dance technique when the dancer moves backward, while imitating the movements of the legs as if walking forward.
The technique became popular around the world after Michael Jackson performed the dance moves during the performance of "Billie Jean" at Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever on March 25, 1983. It later became his " calling card", and on this moment one of the most renowned technicians in the world.
The illusion is to create a smooth backward slide of the dancer. At the initial moment, the leg in front rests on the floor with the entire plane of the foot, while the leg behind is in the “on the toe” position. The front foot pressed to the floor remains on it, but slides easily and smoothly back behind the foot standing on the toe. Now the front leg goes down to the full foot, and the back one rises to the toe. Thus the steps are repeated over and over again. Variations of this movement allow you to perform a "moonwalk" with sliding forward, to the side, and even in a circle.
Moonwalk by Michael Jackson
There are many documented examples of the moonwalk. Charlie Chaplin demonstrating the backward sliding walk in a restaurant performance scene in Modern Times (1936).
Moonwalk by Charlie Chaplin
In 1932, the "moonwalk" was demonstrated by the American jazz singer and showman Cab Calloway.
Moonwalk by Cab Calloway - Zaz Zuh Zaz
In the 1945 film Children of Paradise, the moonwalk was used in the pantomime Marche sur place, created by Étienne Decroix and Jean-Louis Barraud.
In 1955, it was recorded at a performance by tap dancer Bill Bailey. He performed tap-dancing movements, and at the end of the performance he slipped backwards backstage.
The French mime Marcel Marceau has used it in his career since the 1940s. through the 1980s, as part of a production, performing as a mime. In Marceau's famous dance "Walking Against the Wind", he pretended to be pushed back by a gust of wind.
James Brown used the moonwalk motion in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers as well as in his stage performances.
Moonwalk by James Brown (James Brown - Best Dance)
David Bowie was the first to moonwalk while standing still.
The original version of the dance appeared in Bowie's pantomime pieces in the 1960s - he studied mime with Etienne Decroix, Marcel Marceau's teacher, and also with Lindsey Kemp, who coached Marceau.
During the Diamond Dogs Tour David Bowie in 1974, Michael Jackson was among those who attended his Los Angeles shows, and later spoke about interesting movements Bowie.
Moonwalk by David Bowie
Singer Geoffrey Daniel moonwalked at Shalamar's "A Night To Remember" performance on Top of the Pops in England in 1982, and was known for sliding backwards at public events (including the weekly episodes of Soul Train) in 1974.
Also in 1982, Debbie Allen performed the moonwalk during a scene with Gwen Verdon in Season 1, Episode 10 ("Come One, Come All") of the 1982 television series Fame.
Moonwalk by Debbie Allen
It wasn't until 1983, however, that the "moonwalk" caught the public's attention, when Michael Jackson performed it during a TV special on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever on March 25 of that year.
Dressed in signature black pants, silver socks, a silver shirt, a black sequined jacket, a single rhinestone glove, and a black fedora, Jackson spun around, struck a pose, and began the moonwalk backwards. The audience applauded the walk of Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson's first moonwalk
And since then, the "moonwalk" has become Jackson's hallmark in the song "Billie Jean" and his calling card. Michael Jackson's autobiography was titled , he also starred in a 1988 film titled "Moon Traveler".
Current page: 1 (total book has 10 pages)
Michael Jackson
Moonwalk, or Moonwalk: Michael Jackson about himself
I want to touch the truth and be able to express this truth through what you have experienced and felt - whether it be joy or sorrow - then your life will acquire more meaning and maybe you will be able to touch the hearts of others. This is the highest content of art. For the sake of such moments of insight, I live.
Michael Jackson
Chapter 1
Just kids with a dream
I've always wanted to learn how to tell stories, you know, stories that come from my soul. I would like to sit by the fire and tell people stories - to captivate them, make them laugh and cry, so that I can lead them anywhere with just deceptive words. I would like to tell them stories that would stir their souls and transform them. I've always been drawn to this. You can only imagine how great writers must feel knowing that they have such power. Sometimes I feel like I could do the same. I would like to develop this ability in myself. In a way, songwriting requires the same skills, creates emotional ups and downs, but a story is a sketch. This is mercury. Very few books have been written about the art of storytelling, about how to captivate listeners, how to bring people together and amuse them. No costume, no makeup, nothing at all, just you and your voice, and your powerful ability to lead them anywhere, transform their lives, even if only for a few minutes.
As I begin to tell my story, I want to repeat what I usually tell people when they ask me how I got started with the Jackson Five: I was so young when we started that I don't really remember anything. Most people are lucky: they start their careers old enough, when they already perfectly understand what they are doing and why. But, of course, it was not so with me. They remember how it all happened, but I was only five years old. When you step on the stage as a child, you are still too young to understand much of what is happening around you. Most of the decisions that affect your life are made in your absence. So here's what I remember. I remember that I sang like a catechumen, danced with great pleasure and gave too much for a child. I don't remember many of the details, of course. All I remember is that the Jackson 5 really started taking over the stage when I was only eight or nine years old.
I was born in Gary, Indiana, in the late summer of 1958, the seventh of nine children in our family. My father, Joe Jackson, was born in Arkansas and in 1949 married my mother, Katherine Skruse, originally from Alabama. The following year, my sister Maureen was born, having the hard time of being the eldest child. She was followed by Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Latoya and Marlon. And after me, Randy and Janet were born.
Some of my earliest memories are of my father working in a steel mill. It was hard, mind-numbing work, and he played music to distract himself. And mother worked at this time in a department store. Thanks to my father, and also because my mother loved music, she constantly sounded in our house. My father and his brother created the Falcons (Falcons) group, which performed R-and-B for us. My father, like his brother, played the guitar. They performed famous songs early rock and roll and blues by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Otis Rodding - the list goes on. They were amazing styles, and each had its own influence on Joe and on us, although at the time we were too young to understand it. Falcons rehearsed in the living room of our house in Gary, so I was raised on R-and-B. We had nine children in the family, and my father's brother had eight, so together we made up a huge family. We did music at our leisure - it rallied us and, as it were, kept our father within the family. This tradition gave rise to the "Jackson Five" - later we became the "Jacksons" ("The Jacksons") - and through such training and musical tradition, I began to develop independently and created my own style.
Almost all of my childhood memories are connected with work, although I loved to sing. I wasn't forced to do it by stage-loving parents like Judy Garland. I sang because I liked it and because singing was as natural to me as breathing. I sang because it was not my parents or relatives who encouraged me to do it, but my own inner life in the world of music. There were times - and I want to make this clear - I would come home from school and, as soon as I left my books, I rushed to the studio. There I sang until late at night, in fact, when it was already time for me to sleep. There was a park across the street from the Motown studios, and I remember looking at the guys playing there. I looked at them and wondered - I just could not imagine such freedom, such a carefree life - and more than anything in the world I wanted to be so free that I could go out into the street and behave like them. So I had sad moments as a child. But this happens with all children who have become "stars". Elizabeth Taylor told me she felt the same way. When you work at a very young age, the world can seem terribly unfair. No one forced me to be little Michael the soloist - I chose it myself, and I loved it - but the work was hard. When we were recording for an album, for example, we would go into the studio right after school, and sometimes I would get a bite to eat and sometimes I wouldn't. There just wasn't time. I returned home exhausted, at eleven or even twelve at night, when it was long overdue to sleep.
So I'm pretty much like anyone who worked as a kid. I know how much children have to endure and what they sacrifice. I know what such a life teaches. My life has taught me that older man becomes, the more demands she makes on him. Somehow I feel old. I really feel like an old man, a man who has seen a lot and experienced a lot. With so many years of hard work, it's hard for me to believe that I'm only twenty-nine. I have been working for twenty-four years. Sometimes it seems to me that I live out my life, I pass over eighty, and people pat me on the back. That's what happens when you start so young.
When I first played with my brothers, we were known as the Jacksons. Later we will become the "Jackson Five". And later, when we left Motown, we became the Jacksons again.
Every single one of my or the band's albums since we went pro and started making our own music has been dedicated to our mother, Katherine Jackson. In my earliest memories, she holds me in her arms and sings to me "You are my sunshine" or "Cotton fields". She often sang to me and to my brothers and sisters. Although my mother lived in Indiana for quite some time, she grew up in Alabama, where blacks grow up listening to country and western tunes that sound on the radio just like spirituals sound in church. She still loves listening to Willie Nelson to this day. She always had beautiful voice, and I think that my mother - and, of course, the Lord God - endowed me with the ability to sing.
My mother played the piano and clarinet and taught my elder sister Latoya how to play these instruments. Mom already knew from childhood that she would never play her favorite music in front of others - and not because she had no talent or abilities, she was simply crippled by polio in childhood. She overcame the disease, but did not get rid of the lameness. As a child, she hardly went to school, nevertheless she considered herself lucky: she recovered at a time when many were dying from this disease. I remember how important she was to getting us polio vaccinated. She even made us miss a performance at a youth club once because vaccinations were so important in our family.
Mom knew that polio was not sent to her as a punishment, that this was the Lord's test that she had to go through, and she instilled in me a love for Him that would live in me forever. My mother inspired me that my talent for singing and dancing is as much a gift from God as a beautiful sunset or a snowstorm that leaves behind snow for children to play with. Although we spent a lot of time rehearsing or traveling, my mother made time to take me—usually with Rebbie and Latoya—to the Jehovah's Witnesses temple.
Years after we left Gary, we were on The Ed Sullivan Show, pop concert V live, which was broadcast on Sunday evening and in which America first saw the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Slide and Stone. After the concert, Mr. Sullivan thanked and congratulated each of us, but I thought about what he said to me before the concert. I was hanging around backstage like a Pepsi commercial kid and bumped into Mr. Sullivan. It seemed that he was delighted, shook my hand and, without releasing it, gave me parting words. It was 1970, when best performers rock were people who ruined themselves with alcohol and drugs. The older, wiser generation of entertainers did not want to lose their youth, others have already said that I remind them of Frankie Lemon, the great young singer 1950s, who ended his life in a similar way. Ed Sullivan must have been thinking about this and said to me then:
“Never forget where your talent comes from. Your talent is a gift from God.
I was grateful for his kindness, but I could not tell him that my mother does not let me forget about it. I have never had polio—a dancer would be afraid to even think about it—but I know that God tested me and my brothers and sisters differently. The family was large, the house was tiny, and there was little money. Barely enough to make ends meet. Yes, and envious boys from our quarter, throwing stones at our windows when we rehearsed, angrily shouting that nothing would work out for us. When I think about my mother and our childhood, I can tell you: there are awards that cannot be measured either by money, or by thunderous applause, or by prizes.
Mom was a great help to us. As soon as she noticed that one of us was passionate about something, she developed our interest in this direction in every possible way. For example, when I became interested in movie stars, she began to bring home mountains of books about celebrities. Although we had nine children, she treated everyone as if they were the only one. And we all remember what a hard worker and helper she was. This story is as old as the world. Every kid thinks their mom is the best in the world, but we Jacksons have always felt that way. Katherine was so gentle, kind and considerate with us that I can't imagine what it's like to grow up without a mother's love.
I know that if children do not get the necessary love from their parents, they will try to get it from someone else and cling to this person, whether it be a grandfather or whoever. With our mom, we didn't have to look for someone else. She taught us invaluable lessons. Above all, she valued kindness, love and attention to people. Don't offend people. Never ask. Never live at someone else's expense. All this in our house was considered a sin. She wanted us to always give and didn't want us to beg or beg. That's what she was like.
I remember one interesting case. Once - it was back in Gary, I was very young then - early in the morning a certain person was knocking on the door in our district. He literally bled, on the trail it was possible to determine where he had already been. Nobody let him in. Eventually he got to our door and started banging on it. Mom let him in right away. Most people would be afraid, but my mother wasn't like that. I remember I woke up and saw blood on our floor. I wish we were all more like mom.
My earliest memory of my father is when he comes home from the steel mill with a bag of fizzy donuts for all of us. The appetite of my brothers and I was then what we needed, and the package was emptied in an instant. He took us all to ride the carousel in the park, but I was too small and I don't remember it well.
My father has always been a mystery to me, he knows it. My biggest regret is that we were never really close with him. Over the years, he went deeper into himself and, having stopped discussing family matters with us, he realized that it was difficult for him to communicate with us. We used to sit all together, and he would take it and leave. Even today, it is difficult for him to talk about the relationship between father and son - he feels too uncomfortable. And when I notice it, I feel embarrassed too. Father has always protected us, and this is already a lot. He always tried to protect us from deceit. AND the best way looked after our interests. He may have made a few mistakes in all the time, but he always believed that he was doing so for the good of the family. And, of course, much of what we achieved with the help of my father was unique and wonderful, especially if you take our connections with companies and people working in show business. I would say that we were among those lucky few who, having matured, entered show business not empty-handed: we had money, real estate, various investments. Father took care of everything. He cared about his and our benefit. To this day I am grateful to him for the fact that he did not try to take all the money from us, as many parents of little "stars" did. Just imagine: stealing from your own children! The father did nothing of the sort. But I still don't know him, and it's sad, especially when a son yearns to understand his father. He is still a mystery to me and may forever remain so.
What my father helped me gain was not given from God, although the Bible says: what you sow, so shall you reap. Somehow, in moments of frankness, my father said it differently, but the meaning was exactly this: you can have the greatest talent in the world, but if you don’t prepare and work according to the plan, everything will go to dust.
Joe Jackson loved singing and music as much as his mother, but he also knew that beyond Jackson Street lies Big world. I was too young to remember the members of his band, the Falcons, even though they came to our house on weekends to rehearse. The music took them to another world, and they forgot about working at the steel plant, where their father was a crane operator. The Falcons played throughout the city and also played in clubs and colleges in northern Indiana and Chicago. Before starting rehearsals at our house, my father would take a guitar out of the closet and plug it into an amplifier he kept in the basement. Everyone tuned in and the music started. He loved Rhythm and Blues all his life, and the guitar was his pride and joy. The closet where the guitar was kept was considered almost a shrine. Needless to say, we children were not allowed there. Dad didn't take us to church, but both mom and dad knew that music could keep our family safe in a troubled neighborhood where gangs recruited guys my brothers' age. The three older brothers were always given the opportunity to be around when the Falcons came to us. The Pope made it clear that being allowed to listen was a reward for them. In fact, he wished they didn't leave the house.
Tito watched the proceedings with the greatest interest. At school, he took saxophone lessons, but already saw that he had grown enough and the length of his fingers allowed him to pluck the guitar strings, as his father did. It seemed that he would learn, because Tito was very much like his father, and we all felt that he should inherit his father's talents. As he grew older, they became so similar that it was even uncomfortable. My father must have noticed Tito's zeal and set a rule for all my brothers: no one should touch the guitar when he is not at home. Dot.
So Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine were careful to make sure Mom didn't leave the kitchen while they "borrowed" the guitar. They tried not to make any noise as they removed it. Then they would go back to our room and turn on the radio or a small portable player to play along. Tito sat on the bed and, pressing the guitar to his stomach, held it straight. They played with Jackie and Jermaine in turn - first they would try the scales they were taught at school, they would try to pick up "Green Meadow" - a tune heard on the radio.
By this time I was already old enough - I would sneak into the room and watch how they play, having made a promise not to let it slip. One day, my mother caught them, and we were all terribly scared. She scolded the guys, but promised not to tell her father if we were careful. She knew that the guitar kept the boys from talking to the punks and from fighting, so she was not going to take away from them what allowed them to be kept at home.
Naturally, something had to happen sooner or later, and then the string broke. The brothers were in a panic. There was no time to put it on before my father returned, and besides, none of us knew how to do it. The brothers never decided what to do, so they put the guitar back in the closet, fervently hoping that the father would think that it had torn itself. Father, of course, did not fall for this and was beside himself with rage. The sisters advised me not to interfere and lay low. I heard Tito cry when my father discovered everything, and naturally I went to look. Tito was lying on the bed crying when his father entered the room and motioned him to get up. Tito got scared, and his father just stood there, holding his favorite guitar in his hands. Looking at Tito with a heavy, piercing gaze, he said:
Come on, show me what you can do.
My brother plucked up the courage to play some chords he had learned himself. When my father saw how well Tito played, it became clear to him that Tito was practicing guitar. He realized that for Tito, and for all of us, his favorite guitar was not a toy at all. He had an epiphany: what happened was not an accident at all. At that moment, mother entered and began to admire our musical ability. She told her father that we have talent and he should listen to us. She kept reminding him of this, and then one day he began to listen to us and he liked what he heard. Tito, Jackie and Jermaine began to rehearse in earnest. Two years later, when I was about five, my mother told my father that I sang well and could play bongos. So I became a member of the group.
Around that time, my father decided that the matter of music in his family was serious. Gradually, he began to spend less and less time with the Falcons and more and more with us. We just got together, and he gave us advice and taught us the technique of playing the guitar. Marlon and I weren't old enough to play yet, but we watched my father rehearse with the others and learned by watching. We were still forbidden to touch the guitar when Father was away, but the brothers loved to play it when they were allowed to. In the house on Jackson Street, the walls trembled with music. Mom and dad paid for music lessons Rebbie and Jackie when they were little, so they are well trained. The rest of us played music at school and played in Gary's school bands, but the energy in us was overflowing - we wanted to play all the time.
The Falcons were still making money, although they played less and less, and without this additional money we would have been in trouble. This money was enough to feed an ever-increasing family, but not enough for us to be able to buy anything but the bare necessities. My mother worked part-time at Sears, my father still worked at the steel mill and no one went hungry, but I think looking back we felt like we were at a dead end.
One day, dad did not come home on time, and mom began to worry. By the time he arrived, she was ready to give him a good thrashing. We were not averse to watching: it was interesting to see if he would be able to wriggle out. But when my father stuck his head in the door, his face was sly, and he was hiding something behind his back. We were shocked when he showed us a sparkling guitar, a little less than that that was in the closet. We thought that means we'll get the old one. But daddy said that new guitar destined for Tito to give it to anyone who wants to practice. We were not allowed to take her to school and show off. It was a serious gift, and this day was remembered in the Jackson family.
Mom was happy for us, but she knew her husband. She already knew what grandiose plans and intentions he had for us. He talked to her at night, after we children fell asleep. He cherished dreams, these dreams were not limited to one guitar. Pretty soon we had to deal not just with tools, but with equipment. Jermaine got a bass guitar and an amplifier. Jackies are maracas. Our bedroom and living room began to look like a music store. Sometimes I heard Mom and Dad quarreling when the question of money came up, as all these tools and tools forced us to save on what little we had every week. Dad still managed to convince mom, and he did not miscalculate.
We even had microphones at home. It was indeed a luxury at the time, especially for a woman who was trying to swindle a measly penny, but I understand that the introduction of microphones in our house was not simply due to the desire to keep up with the Joneses or anyone else in our amateur evenings. They were needed for work. I've seen people at talent shows who might sound great at home, but vanish as soon as they're in front of the microphone. Others began to scream heart-rendingly, as if wanting to prove that they did not need microphones. They didn't have our advantage, the advantage that experience alone gives. I think some people must have been jealous of us, because in the past, being able to wield a microphone gave us an advantage. If this is true, then we had nothing to envy: after all, we sacrificed so much - free time, school life and friends. We started to do well, but we worked like people twice our age.
While I was watching my older brothers play, including Marlon playing the bongo drums, my dad brought a couple of boys—one named Johnny Jackson and the other Randy Rancier—and sat them down percussion instruments and a harmonium.
Motown would later claim that they were our cousins, but this was done purely for publicity: to portray us as one big family. We have become a real group. I, like a sponge, absorbed everything I could, watching everyone. I was all the attention when my brothers were rehearsing or playing charity concerts or in shopping malls. Most of all, I loved watching Jermain, because he was a singer at that time and was my older brother. I did not perceive Marlon as the eldest: there was too little difference in our age. Jermain took me to kindergarten, and I wore his clothes. If he did something, I tried to imitate him. When I did well, it brought a smile to my father and brothers, and when I started singing, they began to listen. I then sang in treble - just reproduced the sounds. I was so small that I didn't know the meaning of most of the words, but the more I sang, the better I got.
I have always been able to dance. I watched the movements of Marlon - Jermain had no time for dancing: he had to hold a big bass guitar. And I could keep up with Marlon, because he was only a year older than me. Pretty soon I was already singing almost the entire repertoire at our house and preparing to perform in public with my brothers. During rehearsals, our strengths and weak sides, and, of course, there was a change of roles.
Our house in Gary was small—three rooms, in fact—but at the time it seemed much larger to me. When you are very small, the whole world seems so huge that a small room seems to be four times larger than it is. When we returned to Gary a few years later, we were all amazed at how tiny our house was. I remembered him as big, but in reality - take five steps from front door and go out the opposite door. In fact, it was no bigger than a garage, but when we lived there, it seemed great to us children. Things look so different when you're little.
I have very vague memories of high school in Gary. I vaguely remember being taken to school the first day after kindergarten but I distinctly remember how much I hated her. Naturally, I did not want my mother to leave me there, did not want to be there.
After some time, I got used to it, like all children, and fell in love with my teachers, especially women. They were all so sweet and just adored me. The teachers were just wonderful: when I moved to the next class, they cried and hugged me, saying how sorry they were that I was leaving them. I loved my teachers so much that I stole jewelry from my mother and gave it to them. They were very touched, but eventually my mother found out about it and put an end to my generosity. My desire to somehow thank them for what I received from them proves how much I loved them and the school.
Once in the first grade, I participated in a concert that was shown to the whole school. Each student had to prepare something. When I got home, I consulted with my parents. We decided that I should wear black pants with a white shirt and sing "I'll Climb Any Mountain" from The Sound of Music. The reaction of the audience when I finished singing shocked me. The hall burst into applause, people smiled, some stood up. The teachers were crying. I just couldn't believe my eyes. I gave them all happiness. It was such a wonderful feeling. But at the same time, I was a little embarrassed: I didn’t do anything special. I just sang, as I sang at home every evening. The thing is, when you're on stage, you don't realize how you sound or what you're good at. Just open your mouth and eat.
Soon dad began to prepare us for talent competitions. He turned out to be an excellent mentor and spent a lot of time and money on our preparation. God gives talent to a person, and father taught us how to develop it. In addition, we, I think, had an innate gift for performing on the stage. We loved performing and we put everything into it. My father sat with us every day after school and rehearsed. We spoke to him and he gave us advice. Who blunders, sometimes received a belt, and sometimes a rod. My father was very strict with us, really strict. Marlon always got it. And I was punished for what happened, as a rule, outside of rehearsals. Dad made me so angry and hurt me so much that I tried to give him back, and got even more. I would take off my shoe and throw it at him, or just start beating it with my fists. That's why I got more than all my brothers put together. I never let my father down and he was ready to kill me, tear me apart. My mother told me that I fought back, even when I was very young, but I don’t remember that. I only remember how I dived under the table and ran away from him, and this made him even more angry. We had a very stormy relationship.
Anyway, most of the time we rehearsed. They rehearsed constantly. Sometimes late in the evening we had time to play games or with toys. It happened, they played hide and seek or jumped through the rope, but that's all. Most time we worked. I well remember how my brothers and I rushed home to be in time for the arrival of my father, because it would have been tight for us if we were not ready to start the rehearsal on time.
In all this, my mother helped us a lot. She was the first to discover our talent, and she continued to help us realize it. We would hardly have been able to achieve what we have achieved without her love and benevolence. She was worried about us: after all, we were in such tension, we rehearsed for so many hours, but we wanted to show our best, and we really loved music.
Music was appreciated in Gary. We had our own radio stations and nightclubs, and there was no shortage of people who wanted to play in them. After rehearsing with us on Saturday afternoon, dad would go see the local musical show or even go to Chicago to see someone perform. He constantly tried to find something that could help us. Returning home, he told us what he saw and who performed how. He was up to date with all the news, whether it was at the local theater, which held competitions in which we could participate, or in the "Cavalcade of Stars" with the participation famous actors, whose costumes and movements we could adopt. Sometimes I didn't see my dad until Sunday when I got back from church, but as soon as I ran into the house, he would start telling me about what he had seen the day before. He convinced me that I could dance on one leg like James Brown if I tried. That's how it worked out for me: straight from the church to the stage.
We started getting awards for our performances when I was six years old. Each of us now knew our place: I was second from the left, facing the audience, Jermaine on the edge of me and Jackie on the right. Tito stood on the right edge with his guitar, next to him was Marlon. Jackie grew up and towered over me and Marlon. So we performed at one competition after another and it turned out well. Other bands quarreled among themselves and broke up, but we performed more and more harmoniously and gained experience. The people of Gary, who regularly went to talent competitions, began to recognize us, so we tried to outdo ourselves and surprise them. We didn't want them to get bored at our show. We knew: everything new is always for the better, it helps to grow, so we were not afraid of new elements in our performance.
Winning an amateur evening or talent competition with a ten-minute program consisting of two songs requires the same amount of energy as an hour and a half concert. I'm convinced it's because there's no room for error, because you're putting in the work that really burns you from the inside in just one or two songs—much more so than when you're slowly playing twelve or fifteen songs in a row. These talent contests were ours vocational education. Sometimes we traveled hundreds of miles to sing a couple of songs and really hoped the crowd wouldn't reject us because we weren't local. We competed with people different ages and skills - from professional bands and actors to singers and dancers like us. We needed to capture the attention of the audience and keep it. Nothing was left to chance - no costumes, no shoes, no hairstyles. Everything should be as dad intended. We really looked amazingly professional. After such planning, if we performed songs like in rehearsal, the award itself went into our hands. It was like that even when we played at Wallace High, the part of town that had its own musicians and its own clique. We challenged them on their own territory. Of course, the local musicians always had their fans, so when we left our home and came to other countries, it was very hard. When the entertainer raised his hands over us, “calling” for applause, we wanted the audience to understand: we gave our best more than anyone else.
Michael Jackson
Moonwalk, or Moonwalk: Michael Jackson about himself
I want to touch the truth and be able to express this truth through what you have experienced and felt - whether it be joy or sorrow - then your life will acquire more meaning and maybe you will be able to touch the hearts of others. This is the highest content of art. For the sake of such moments of insight, I live.
Michael Jackson
Just kids with a dream
I've always wanted to learn how to tell stories, you know, stories that come from my soul. I would like to sit by the fire and tell people stories - to captivate them, to make them laugh and cry, so that I can lead them anywhere with just deceitful words. I would like to tell them stories that would stir their souls and transform them. I've always been drawn to this. You can only imagine how great writers must feel knowing that they have such power. Sometimes I feel like I could do the same. I would like to develop this ability in myself. In a way, songwriting requires the same skills, creates emotional ups and downs, but a story is a sketch. This is mercury. Very few books have been written about the art of storytelling, about how to captivate listeners, how to bring people together and amuse them. No costume for you, no makeup, nothing at all - just you and your voice, and your powerful ability to lead them anywhere, transform their lives, at least for a few minutes.
As I begin to tell my story, I want to repeat what I usually tell people when they ask me how I got started with the Jackson Five: I was so young when we started that I don't really remember anything. Most people are lucky: they start their careers old enough, when they already perfectly understand what they are doing and why. But, of course, it was not so with me. They remember how it all happened, but I was only five years old. When you step on the stage as a child, you are still too young to understand much of what is happening around you. Most of the decisions that affect your life are made in your absence. So here's what I remember. I remember that I sang like a catechumen, danced with great pleasure and gave too much for a child. I don't remember many of the details, of course. All I remember is that the Jackson 5 really started taking over the stage when I was only eight or nine years old.
I was born in Gary, Indiana, in the evening, in the late summer of 1958 - I was the seventh of nine children in our family. My father, Joe Jackson, was born in Arkansas and in 1949 married my mother, Katherine Skruse, originally from Alabama. The following year, my sister Maureen was born, having the hard time of being the eldest child. She was followed by Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Latoya and Marlon. And after me, Randy and Janet were born.
Some of my earliest memories are of my father working in a steel mill. It was hard, mind-numbing work, and he played music to distract himself. And mother worked at this time in a department store. Thanks to my father, and also because my mother loved music, she constantly sounded in our house. My father and his brother created the Falcons (Falcons) group, which performed R-and-B for us. My father, like his brother, played the guitar. They played the famous songs of early rock and roll and the blues of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Otis Rodding - the list goes on. They were amazing styles, and each had its own influence on Joe and on us, although at the time we were too young to understand it. Falcons rehearsed in the living room of our house in Gary, so I was raised on R-and-B. We had nine children in the family, and my father's brother had eight, so together we made up a huge family. We did music at our leisure - it rallied us and, as it were, kept our father within the family. This tradition gave rise to the "Jackson Five" - later we became the "Jacksons" ("Jacksons") - and through such training and musical tradition, I began to develop independently and created my own style.
Almost all of my childhood memories are connected with work, although I loved to sing. I wasn't forced to do it by stage-loving parents like Judy Garland. I sang because I liked it and because singing was as natural to me as breathing. I sang because it was not my parents or relatives that encouraged me to do it, but my own inner life in the world of music. There were times - and I want to make it clear - I would come home from school and, as soon as I dropped my books, I rushed to the studio. There I sang until late at night, in fact, when it was already time for me to sleep. There was a park across the street from the Motown studios, and I remember looking at the guys playing there. I looked at them and wondered - I just could not imagine such freedom, such a carefree life - and more than anything I wanted to be so free that I could go out into the street and behave like them. So I had sad moments as a child. But this happens with all children who have become "stars". Elizabeth Taylor told me she felt the same way. When you work at a very young age, the world can seem terribly unfair. No one forced me to be little Michael the soloist - I chose it myself, and I loved it - but the work was hard. When we were recording for an album, for example, we would go into the studio right after school, and sometimes I would get a bite to eat and sometimes I wouldn't. There just wasn't time. I returned home exhausted, at eleven or even twelve at night, when it was long overdue to sleep.
Why does Michael Jackson moonwalk? January 27th, 2018
Who doesn't know Michael Jackson's moonwalk. Why is she called that?
"Moonwalk" or "sliding back", or "glide" (English moonwalk) - a dance technique when the dancer moves backward, while imitating the movement of the legs as when walking forward. The technique became popular around the world after Michael Jackson performed the dance moves during the performance of "Billie Jean" in March 1983. Later, she became his "calling card", and at the moment one of the most famous techniques in the world.
But what about the moon? What, Armstrong walked on the moon backwards? Why is it possible to walk on the Moon like this and why? I don't find any connection with the moon.
Let's figure it out...
If you believe that Michael Jackson invented the "moonwalk", then you are very wrong. It is impossible to determine the specific inventor of the moonwalk, just as it is impossible to attribute the invention of rock and roll to one artist. This dance move was, as writer Shanna Freeman put it, "the product of more than 70 years of dance evolution." Cab Calloway claimed to have performed similar dance back in the 30s. The earliest recordings where you can see something very similar to the movement of Jackson, belong to the dancer Bill Bailey.
Maybe it seemed to Jackson that the illusion of movement "forward and backward at the same time" looked like "like walking on the moon," but there were hardly many who thought: "That's right! Just like Neil Armstrong!" However, the name invented by Michael, of course, stuck.
"Michael called this movement the moonwalk," says Daniel, "but the moonwalk is actually a different dance." In any case, it used to be different. “We called the moonwalk a movement that creates the illusion that you are on the moon, where gravity is less than Earth. And Michael somehow managed to call the backslide a moonwalk. But from a commercial point of view, it was probably a coup," Daniel says, chuckling himself at how modestly he put it.
Michael Jackson's moonwalk has nothing to do with the laws of gravity. “The backslide is really meant to make it look like you're walking forward and all of a sudden there's an escalator underneath you pulling you back,” says Daniel. - This is the illusion of sliding: you seem to be walking, but the earth is pulling you back - this is how it looks if you make the movement correctly. If you are clearly pulling yourself back, if you can see it in your legs, then this is a wrong performance.
Before the movement was called backslide, it probably had other names as well.
In the mid-80s, shortly after Jackson made the moonwalk popular, one of the legendary black artists of the first half of the 20th century, Cab Calloway, was rumored to have performed it during his shows in Manhattan. A 1985 article from The Crisis stated: “When asked if it was his teenage grandson who taught him the move, Calloway replied: “What do you mean ... we danced it back in the 30s! Only then it was called The Buzz.”
But if you want to know where Jackson himself saw the moonwalk, then you can not guess. The answer is contained in one word: Shalamar.
It was Shalamar member Jeffrey Daniel, a very famous dancer in the R&B/dance community from Solid Gold, who brought Michael's attention to what was then called "the backslide". Although it is believed that the “moonwalk” is a complicated backglide, in which, in addition to the legs, the shoulders and head move.
On May 16, 1983, at the Motown 20th Anniversary TV Concert, Michael Jackson performed "Billie Jean" and 50 million viewers saw the later legendary Moonwalk. The audience gave a standing ovation to the magnificent Michael.
But this performance of Michael Jackson was noticed not only by his fans. Such authorities in the dance world as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They openly admired his dancing and accepted Michael into an unofficial fraternity of dancers. The moonwalk became so popular that different countries there were even competitions for the best performance of this dance. And of course, Michael's popularity grew instantly: the Thriller album (1984) won seven Grammys and eight American Music Awards.
Let's see how it was...
Michael Jackson's autobiography was titled Moonwalk and he also starred in a 1988 movie called Moonwalker.
sources
