Michael Jackson became famous for moving in ways few performers could imitate, but some of his inspiration came from an unexpected place. While preparing to play the Scarecrow in the 1978 musical The Wiz, Michael reportedly spent hours watching videotapes of gazelles, cheetahs and panthers because he wanted to study the effortless grace of their movements.
It was typical of the way Michael learned. He was an extraordinary visual student who said he could watch someone perform a dance step and understand how to reproduce it almost immediately. Instead of limiting himself to formal choreography, he studied movement wherever he found something worth absorbing.
Watch Michael Jackson’s Movement in The Wiz
Playing the Scarecrow required Michael to move with a loose, almost weightless quality. BET later noted that his preparation included studying those animal videos specifically to learn graceful movement. The finished performance alongside Diana Ross shows a 19-year-old Michael already treating every step, gesture and body position as part of the character.
Animals were only part of his education. Michael openly studied dancers and entertainers including Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr. and James Brown. Brown was especially important. Michael later called him his greatest inspiration and remembered being mesmerized by the way Brown moved onstage.
Michael Jackson’s Famous Panther Dance in “Black or White”
Years later, the image of a panther became connected to one of Michael’s most striking dance sequences. In the full 1991 “Black or White” short film, a black panther transforms into Michael before he launches into an intense solo commonly called the Panther Dance. There is no evidence that the sequence directly came from his Wiz research, but the connection makes an interesting echo of how closely he had studied animal movement years earlier.
Michael Jackson transformed pop performance through the Moonwalk, Thriller, “Billie Jean” and choreography that influenced generations of dancers. But his greatness did not come from studying one person or mastering one trick. He watched legends, street dancers and apparently even wild animals, then filtered everything through a style unmistakably his own. Watch the first video to see the young Michael putting that study into practice, then the second to see just how powerful his movement had become.