№ 20 · PERFORMANCE
The Robot, Live on Soul Train
Dancing Machine performance, November 17, 1973
MICHAEL JACKSON
The King of Pop
★ RARE
← MICHAEL JACKSON
CARD N° 20 · PERFORMANCE · ★ RARE
The Robot, Live on Soul Train
Dancing Machine performance, November 17, 1973
№ 20 PERFORMANCE
The Robot, Live on Soul Train
When the Jackson 5 performed Dancing Machine on Soul Train in November 1973, fifteen-year-old Michael casually did 'the robot' for about four seconds in the middle of the bridge. Within weeks, every Black kid in America was practising it. It was the first viral dance move of the television era.
▶ THE MOMENT
Jackson 5 — Dancing Machine (Soul Train, 1973)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgC4eRMyzbk
MICHAEL JACKSON · B·SIDE · VOL.I
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THE FACT
When the Jackson 5 performed Dancing Machine on Soul Train in November 1973, fifteen-year-old Michael casually did 'the robot' for about four seconds in the middle of the bridge. Within weeks, every Black kid in America was practising it. It was the first viral dance move of the television era.
WHAT MOST DON'T KNOW
Michael had picked up the robot — a popping-and-locking move pioneered by West Coast street dancers including Charles 'Robot' Washington — from his mother Katherine, who watched it on Soul Train at home. He practised it for weeks in the family mirror. On the night of the performance, Don Cornelius famously cued the camera in for a close-up the moment Michael's body began to lock. Soul Train viewership the following week reportedly jumped 22 percent. The robot would resurface in nearly every Michael Jackson performance for the next thirty-six years, including in the Smooth Criminal video bridge and at the 1993 Super Bowl. Cornelius later said: 'I'd been doing the show for years. That was the moment I knew that boy was something the world had never seen.'
▶
THE MOMENT
Jackson 5 — Dancing Machine (Soul Train, 1973) — Watch the robot break at the bridge — pop culture history in 4 seconds.