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Would Michael Jackson have been such a sensation if he couldn't dance?
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When I was looking through the personal ads for a guy who could dance, I got a lot of nastigrams from guys who claimed that real men--heterosexual men--didn't dance. My reply was usually, I'd like to see that guy at a salsa club, tango milonga or a hip hop club standing and announce to the men there that they all must be gay. I'd expect the guy would get a pounding in the alley way if he didn't pee in his pants. Michael Jackson could dance, but sometimes he didn't seem to be a real man.
Can you be manly and dance? Gene Kelly seemed to go out of his way to be "manly" and with shoulders and biceps like Patrick Swayze, I think there was little doubt. Micheal Jackson was thin, with a silhouette more like Fred Astaire. Fred Astaire wasn't particularly handsome until he moved. These guys were, of course, white. Antonio Gades who starred in flamenco-centered films by Carlos Saura was also thin and handsome. He was a flamenco dancer. His passing didn't make headlines. Yet here I think that's part of a cultural divide, between black and white, brown and white and Asians lying somewhere in between. Latino and black men and European men don't have the same feeling about manliness and dance as white American men.
Michael Jackson was black and came from a music tradition where dancing was expected (Motown) and he could certainly dance. The problem with Michael is that while he looked like a man, he slowly morphed into an androgynous otherworldly being. Was he black? Was he white? Why did he begin to look like Diana Ross with lipstick and heavy eye makeup?
For Jackson to be popular in other parts of the world for his dancing, isn't so strange. When I attended a college in England, the largest club on campus was the ballroom club. Men weren't ashamed of being able to dance although at the college dance parties where there were predominately non-dancers, the only people dancing before they were sufficiently drunk were the Muslim and Baha'i students. In other words, teetotalers. I'm sure if some dancing Mormons had been there, too, they would have joined.
What I find particularly sad is when, in mixed groups, or groups that are predominately white, men hesitate to get up. Men who might dance at home, men who might get up and dance in a group that is predominately Persian, or Latino or Russian, will not dance. A second generation Persian Iranian told me that when he was a child, he loved to dance, his father loved to dance, but now he doesn't dance--not in public, not with friends--or should I say not with friends that are predominately white American.
Is it fear of being unlike the rest of the crowd, an attempt to acculturate into the white American cultural norms or is it fear of being labeled gay? I don't know. I do know what some extremely ignorant men have written to me about being hetero-phobic because real men don't dance and because John Wayne never danced (He did and that's another story).
Michael Jackson did dance, he could hold an audience's attention by just dancing and not singing. He didn't have to stoop to pseudo sexual acts for shock appeal. And he made a lot of men, black, white, brown and yellow, want to dance just like him. Perhaps his dancing more than his music was what truly made him an international star. Too bad there was never a real Broadway style musical on stage or on the silver screen that starred Michael Jackson.
See a tribute made by a fan comparing Michael Jackson and Gene Kelly.
Another clip showing Michael Jackson holding our attention by just dancing.
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