Let’s All Moonwalk…Shall We?

davidluiz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:06:49 +0000

The moonwalk is a most difficult dance skill to achieve – at least for one as fumble-footed as I am. But it’s more than just an incredible dance step. I think it’s one of history’s defining moments. Clad in a dark suede jacket generously garnished with ambitious sequins, a young lanky kid with a song tossed his hat, and denied being ‘Billie Jean’s lover. As his legs kicked the air inordinately and rhythmically – moving to the enrapturing beat streaming through overhead speakers, he told us – those who at the Apollo Theatre witnessed this embarrassingly glorious moment and those of us who were told about it – he told us what his mama always told him: ‘Don’t go around breaking young girls’ hearts’. We listened – divided as we were by our hasty racial classifications, by hate, and by our little exclusive paths to heaven. We listened. But we were still the same. The kid was just about done with everything he had to say (and we all acquitted him of fathering Billie Jean’s son). But he wasn’t done yet. He pulled his pants up, briskly threw his ungloved hand at us twice, looked right and left adroitly – almost robotically, and then, without so much of an ‘excuse me’, rudely undid us all. That was the moment we had excitedly not been waiting for – a moment that suddenly came upon us all, a moment that will be talked about for as long as the sequined glove is remembered. The kid, with a whoosh, slid backwards with quick interlocking fluid steps across the stage – unleashing what has been called the moonwalk to a gaping world. We watched and gasped, and celebrated the remarkable artistry. Together we cheered the strangeness and audacity of it all, and, without really consciously recognizing it, we found a common ground we could share, we found ourselves in a dance step. Excited guests leapt to the air – forgetting their prejudices, differences and frozen worlds under their seats. Michael Jackson had achieved the impossible. His steps, more eloquent than an Obama speech, unzipped a whole world of possibilities, of harmony, of love and interfaith dialogue. When he sang ‘Black or White’, ‘Man in the Mirror’, ‘Heal the World’ and ‘Beat it’, when he spun, we held our breaths as he, with great showmanship, unraveled the complex theories we had employed as weapons of division; he compromised our cultural complacencies and undermined our easy ways-out: black or white, right or left, high or low – what does it matter? Just beat it, he said. Today the kid is gone. But his moonwalk leaves a lonely trail beckoning on others who would be silent, who would be great, who would look again at the man in the mirror, who would defy boundaries and age-old limitations, and help heal the world. And though he will never kick his heels in defiance anymore, and we may never find another worthy to wear one sequined glove instead of two, we may trust that in the farthest reaches of whatever lies beyond our confines, Michael needs no sequins or false lights. He will not need surgical masks, pain killers or awards. He will not need chauffeurs or cars. He will moonwalk his way through eternity – and leave us wanting.

The Behold File » apollo theatre

Let’s All Moonwalk…Shall We?