It's Saturday...Learn to Moonwalk

Look, I know you'll be spending most of the day glued to your TV sets watching C-SPAN's coverage of the National Book Festival...or college football. But before you get all sedentary, you could learn to Moonwalk.



But, if you prefer sedentary, you can watch the first time Michael Jackson publicly performed the Moonwalk, during the big Motown twenty-fifth anniversary show in 1983.



Or, you can simply read about the Moonwalk here. Interesting to note from the Wikipedia entry on the Moonwalk dance move:

There are many recorded instances of the moonwalk; similar steps are reported as far back as 1932, used by Cab Calloway.^[5] In 1985, Calloway said that the move was called "The Buzz" when he and others performed it in the 1930s.^[6][7]

In 1944, Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien featured the move in their performance of "Under the Bamboo Tree" in Meet Me In St. Louis.^[8]

In 1955, it was recorded in a performance by tap dancer Bill Bailey. He performs a tap routine, and at the end, backslides into the wings.^[9] The French mime artist Marcel Marceau used it throughout his career (from the 1940s through the 1980s), as part of the drama of his mime routines. In Marceau's "Walking Against the Wind" routine, he pretends to be pushed backwards by a gust of wind.^[10]

In the 1950s, Dick Van Dyke performed a similar variation of the moonwalk and camel walk in his comedy routine called "Mailing A Letter On A Windy Corner".

In 1958, Mexican dancer-comedian Adalberto Martinez "Resortes" also performed the moonwalk in the film Colegio de Verano (Summer School)...

Choreographer Bob Fosse moonwalks in his role as the Snake in the 1974 film "The Little Prince". 2^[13]

James Brown used the move^[14] and can be seen performing it in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Another early moonwalker was popper and singer Jeffrey Daniel, who moonwalked in a performance of Shalamar's "A Night To Remember" on Top of the Pops in the UK in 1982^[15] and was known to perform backslides in public performances (including weekly Soul Train episodes) as far back as 1974. Michael Jackson was a fan of Jeffrey Daniel's dancing and would eventually seek him out.

Also in 1982, Debbie Allen performs a moonwalk during a scene with Gwen Verdon in Season 1, Episode 10 ("Come One, Come All") of the TV series Fame.^[16]

So, it didn't start with Jackson. But he sent the mass popularity of the move, the buzz or the backslide, over the moon.

While you're learning the Moonwalk and all about its history, I'll be hard at work and prayer. After all, this is Serious Sermon Saturday.