Moon Walker

As a kid who grew up dancing, Michael Jackson loomed larger than life. At school, every talent show was capped by the best Jackson impersonator and every playground dance battle ended with someone busting out a full MJ routine. Even a mimic, wearing a white kitchen glove, could throw the packed school auditorium into palpitations with the right display of Jackson’s trademark moves, especially the moonwalk, which Jackson first debuted on March, 25, 1983, one day after I was born.Michael Jackson didn’t invent the moonwalk, but he did make it his own, performing it with such technical mastery, and to such a wide audience, that the move and the man became inseparable. The legendary first performance occurred during a live television special, Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which drew a one-night audience of 47 million people. The move comes late in the performance of his hit single “Billy Jean” and is, in essence, a simple back slide. The same move had been demonstrated by countless performers, from Cab Calloway to Fred Astaire, and was a standard among tap dancers for decades. Yet something about the way Jackson performed it that night made it stand out for the ages.