He already had a repertoire of slides, glides and shuffles designed to make it looks like gravity and friction did not apply to him. But, even with the famous Moonwalk, if you looked closely you could see how it worked. The Lean, however, was a straight-up magic trick snuck into a dance routine. It made everyone in the audience go 'WTF' in surprise and delight.
This move is actually performed nightly in Michael Jackson One at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Here are several performers from that show doing it all at once:
They do it well, but none quick as slickly and crisply as Jackson did (especially the performers on the left side, for some strange reason). One of the guys on the right really nails it though, well done to him.
No, it's about the experience that is required to make it look seamless. Some performers have less experience. The front ont on the left side was ok but the two others were messy.
If you watch the video you'll see what I mean - the left side (and some on the right) just gets into position less smoothly and don't have the rigid straight spine Jackson did for the move.
You can also see them spending some time getting into position and locking their boot in, there are dancers in front so the audience will be distracted for much of it. The perils of rewindable video!
It seems to be essentially a full trampoline. You should see the show live, it’s really amazing. Even the people I’ve brought that are not into Michael Jackson wound up loving it. This particular segment is in the Vegas show but is far more impressive within the full production on their much larger stage.
I’d say it’s the best Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas, and I’ve seen all of them over the years.
I'm not sure I buy the articles hypothesis "that strength was in Michael Jackson and his Achilles tendon"
as firstly all the backing dancers did it too and secondly as a skier, leaning forward like that in ski boots is fairly easy - your weight is supported by the front of the boot pushing up on your shin, not by the tendon. I imagine that is what is going on here too - stiff boots.
Marcel Marceau may have popularized the moonwalk (moving backwards while appearing to walk forwards) but not the leaning move, which Jackson invented. Jackson is listed on the patent for the shoes necessary to pull off the lean.
As a skier too, I disagree slightly. It’s relatively easy to do that move in ski boots and skies. Just ski boots won’t cut it. And, indeed, the special boots clip to the floor using a sort of binding.
What a strange title. It seems like a huge leap from the actual story of "Michael Jackson had special boots and pretty good core strength" to "Michael Jackson challenged our understanding of spine biomechanics"...
Playing devil's advocate here: Language has a use beyond matter-of-fact descriptions. Sometimes, creative writing techniques are employed in journalism, though rarely in hard news.
In other words, the headline is not meant to be taken literally.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 81.1 ms ] threadhttp://thejns.org/doi/pdf/10.3171/2018.2.SPINE171443?downloa...
https://youtu.be/8Ttk-2W_PCI?t=2m
Is it secretly a full trampoline, not a pad? Anything less than a spring would cause blunt trauma, let alone neck whiplash.
I’d say it’s the best Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas, and I’ve seen all of them over the years.
as firstly all the backing dancers did it too and secondly as a skier, leaning forward like that in ski boots is fairly easy - your weight is supported by the front of the boot pushing up on your shin, not by the tendon. I imagine that is what is going on here too - stiff boots.
In other words, the headline is not meant to be taken literally.
I particularly liked this one of Rasputin played on a fairground organ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AeN-5PXaaQ
Which reminds me a lot of old video game music