Vincent Paterson spent years at Michael Jackson’s side. He’s the dancer and choreographer who helped build the moves in “Smooth Criminal” and “Black or White,” and he co-directed Michael’s Bad World Tour. If you’ve ever watched Michael and a crew of dancers move like one single body, a lot of that look was Paterson’s work.
Last week Paterson stepped up to accept a big honor. He was given the Vanguard Award at the 2026 Dancers Against Cancer Gala of the Stars, held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, an evening that raises money for charity. The night was hosted by Maks Chmerkovskiy of “Dancing with the Stars,” and Michael’s sister Janet Jackson was there in the crowd.
Then Paterson started talking about Michael. And he couldn’t quite hold it together.
“Sorry, I get very emotional talking about Michael,” he told the room. He caught himself, apologized, and kept right on going.
Here is the moment at the gala where he had to stop and gather himself.
Vincent Paterson gets choked up talking about Michael at the gala
That’s the moment the cameras caught. But the part people are really passing around came a few days later, in an interview Paterson gave to People magazine on October 25. It wasn’t something he said at the gala. It was something he told People afterward, about how Michael actually worked.
Paterson said he would show Michael the steps he’d created. Then Michael would disappear.
“I would teach [Michael] primarily what I created, and then he would go into a space by himself and repeat the same movement, I don’t even know, for half an hour or two hours until it came out of his body so perfectly that everybody thought the movement came from himself,” Paterson told People. “And that gave me great joy, that it felt that organic for him.”
Half an hour. Sometimes two hours. One move, over and over, behind a closed door, until it stopped looking like a step somebody handed him and started looking like it was just Michael being Michael.
This is the dance the two of them are best known for making together.
Michael Jackson, “Smooth Criminal” (official video)
Paterson said the fun of the job was that Michael “always wanted me to create something that the world had never seen before.” When Michael first saw the finished “Smooth Criminal” routine, Paterson remembered, “He was blown away. It was a great, great moment.”
In this clip Paterson sits down and talks through the story behind that famous number and how it came to life.
Paterson on the story behind “Smooth Criminal”
More than fifteen years after Michael passed away, the people who stood closest to him still get choked up just saying his name. Paterson’s story is a small window into why. What looked so loose and easy up on that stage came from a man who was willing to shut himself in a room and run one move until his body owned it.