World-renowned for his influence on the international music and dance scene, Michael Jackson is an iconic figure in the entertainment industry. His talent in being able to fuse his music and dance style together so seamlessly was probably one of the reasons for his booming success as an artist. The transformation and influence that he had brought about in the entertainment industry, dance included, might very well be the greatest legacy that any solo artist had ever left behind.

Michael Jackson, as great a dancer as he was, had surprisingly no formal dance training throughout his career. He was completely self-taught and worked very much in isolation when it came to perfecting many of his famous dance moves (Beers). He had a strong ability as a child to absorb and imitate what he saw quickly. Lacking a formal education, as Michael went around performing, he learnt by watching. Michael Jackson said that “the greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work” and that was what he did, making the best of his circumstances as a child. He was a perfectionist in many aspects, including dance, spending hours refining his steps and moves till they were flawless before they were presented on stage.

Michael Jackson’s dance style was influenced by a wide range of people and styles, from R&B artists to ballerinas, from jazz to street dances and African-American indigenous styles. He was creative in the way he brought different techniques of various dance forms together, taking whatever he saw and liked in other dances and making them his own (Roy). Eventually, the dance style that became uniquely his spanned a wide range dynamically, from fluid, smooth dance movements to sharp, angular and accented ones. His smooth dance style was visually appealing in that his movements were so connected they just seemed to flow from one to another. At the same time, his signature movements, such as the moonwalk, posed a sense of mystery to the audience as to how it could be done, especially since he seemed to be able to do it so effortlessly. What made the moonwalk so intriguing was that walking, which we are all so familiar with, lifting one foot and putting it in front of the other, could in fact be done without lifting a foot off the ground at all. Perhaps it was the desire of uncovering the “mystery” and mastery of his steps that sparked off so much interest in learning them. At the opposite end of the spectrum was his strong accented style of dancing, like that of the robot dance. The movements were a lot less connected and much more punctuated. His accented style of dancing involved intricate bodywork and precise isolation.

Even with such a range of movements