‘MJ’: Dancing the Pain, and Dancing the Pain Away

Don’t get me fallacious: The musical “MJ” is a misfire on so many ranges that it’s laborious to know the place to start. “Thriller” appears to be like like a scene out of “Cats.” The phase exhibiting Michael Jackson’s dance influences — the Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse — is so poor when it comes to ability degree that I felt sorry for dance, the artwork kind. Irritatingly, but predictably, the present, directed by the ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards. It will run for ages. Michael Jackson — for all his flaws — remains to be Michael Jackson.

But the manufacturing does have one thing to indicate about Jackson’s dancing physique in all of its articulate nervousness. It made me suppose: What occurred to that physique when the boy turned a person? How did his dancing change? Was one thing of his inside panorama uncovered in his dancing for all to see? Did we ever actually see it?

When he was alive and constructing his pop canon of music and dance, it wasn’t all the time really easy to know how, past the nervous twitches of the choreography, his spirit was mirrored in his dancing. So a lot about him was wrapped up in the style of the second that you might overlook about his physique. (You couldn’t, in spite of everything, ignore the ever-morphing options of his face.) There have been so many distractions alongside the method — the pores and skin, the cosmetic surgery, the allegations of molestation in opposition to him.

He was all the time hiding. His costumes have been armor, masking his physique, his inside life and even, for all of his extraordinary prowess, his physicality. In a way, he made it potential for his impersonators to exist by crafting and perpetuating a Michael Jackson that anybody might borrow and placed on. Like a rhinestone glove. Or a moonwalk.

The Broadway musical tries its finest to give attention to Jackson, the perfectionist artist, MJ, as the grownup Jackson is listed in the Playbill. By distinction, the function of Little Michael makes the grownup appear extra fragile and more strange. (There’s a 3rd Michael, too, in between them in age; he makes much less of an impression.) You can’t assist however discover the dramatic, drastic adjustments that his dancing physique displayed over time. From his childhood as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to the closing rehearsals for his Dangerous tour of 1992, the second that frames the present, we see the method turmoil ripples via his physique. For Little Michael, laid low with his father, dance is an escape; for the older MJ, it’s a method for his physique to scream in methods he couldn’t with phrases. His voice, excessive and whispery, by no means had the identical emphatic drive.

The older MJ, in the present, fights for inflexible precision — motion phrases are knotty, spiky, filled with angles, whereas Little Michael is easy and enviably relaxed. (Obviously, dance kinds modified drastically throughout that point, however the distinction appears as emotional as it’s bodily.) Two younger boys alternate as Little Michael, Walter Russell III and Christian Wilson. I can solely communicate for Wilson, whose efficiency I noticed, nevertheless it was his dancing that repeatedly snapped me again to consideration.

As a musical, “MJ” can really feel as distant and as inaccessible as a music video. Wilson’s presence — his ease, his successful mix of naïveté and knowledge — introduced it to life. Even throughout the curtain calls, his hips saved flowing, maybe extra quietly, extra internally than when he was in character, however he by no means misplaced maintain of his light but highly effective groove.

That unselfconscious fluidity throws into reduction the rigidity and the constraint of MJ, as performed by Myles Frost. Frost’s dancing accuracy is extraordinary; it reveals a physique handing over on itself and hardening — lonely, brittle, concave. The tipped hat and rounded shoulders weren’t nearly Jackson imitating one in all his idols, Bob Fosse. Weren’t in addition they a option to conceal (and guard) himself from the world?

Jackson’s music was pop, however the method he used his physique had such a laborious edge that to observe footage of his precise Dangerous tour is to see one thing associated to punk — not in sound, however in angst and velocity, anger and assault. The tone is assured and clipped, however past the gleaming exterior, you sense ache. Did he even need to maneuver in entrance of individuals? I can’t determine. At the begin of a efficiency in Bucharest, he stands still, in profile, together with his arms tense at his sides, for what looks like ages whereas the digital camera pans to a crowd on the brink of hysteria.

It’s inconceivable to know who Jackson actually was. “MJ” delivers one more impersonation of the man we noticed onstage and in movies. Often a dancing physique reveals a sure fact about an individual, however in Jackson’s case dancing may need been yet one more factor to cover behind, like one other costume; it was a spot he might management his physique. He might be himself or the particular person he wished to be: robust, highly effective, attractive. Maybe the dancing physique was the man, or his fantasy of himself.

I don’t need to honor the choreographic strategy in “MJ,” which is usually cartoonish. But watching the dancing left me fascinated by Jackson and what dancing turned for him — one thing he was chained to, somewhat than a option to break freed from the field he discovered himself in.

There can also be one other musical on Broadway, “A Strange Loop,” during which the principal character’s dancing physique is tied to his psyche. Directly. The choreographer chargeable for it, Raja Feather Kelly, was unnoticed of competition for a Tony Award. At the identical time, Wheeldon of “MJ” is nominated for finest choreographer, however with no point out of Rich and Tone Talauega, two brothers who danced with Jackson and created Jackson’s motion in the present.

Kelly is a bewildering omission: His intricate choreography is a glowing, distinct a part of what defines Usher, the principal character, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Michael R. Jackson. (Yes, the identify factor is bizarre, too.)

There are loads of dance strikes in “A Strange Loop,” however there’s additionally one thing extra nuanced: the choreography of conduct. Everything the characters say and do has been handled with a gesture or with a motion phrase, rendering it not solely multilayered and authentic, however wholly virtuosic as gesture slides in and out of recognizable dancing.

In “Intermission Song,” Usher (Jaquel Spivey) is surrounded by this ideas, six performers who act out his worries as he creates what he refers to as a “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway” present. A dance break places them in movement. They could hit the identical accents, however they act as people. Toward the finish of “Memory Song,” they carry their arms — slowly, purposely whereas preserving the remainder of their physique nonetheless. It’s balletic, as reverent as the opening prayer in George Balanchine’s “Mozartiana” and a choreographic feat constructed on a grace and pressure born from management. It’s about their dancing our bodies. The present wouldn’t be the identical with out it.

While the dances in “MJ” really feel, to a big extent, like facsimiles of movies, “A Strange Loop” brings up, as soon as once more, the query of what choreography is and what it may be. If Kelly’s strategy is refined, there’s a motive for it: Michael R. Jackson’s expression of queerness, massive and Black, lives in each the thoughts and the physique. The choreography is intentional; it’s a part of the material of every character. It not solely unlocks the potential of dance in musical theater, it expands how a narrative might be instructed.