When Michael Jackson performed it was Showtime. When Magic Johnson performed they also called it Showtime. The entertainer and the basketball player were around at the same time and did their thing on the stage and on the court separately but one apparently had an influence on the other. In his eulogy to the King of Pop, Johnson spoke of how Jackson inspired him to be a better player. Michael made me a better point guard and a better player as I watched him perform. That would be logical. Jackson was a master of movement, perfectly precise, absolutely accurate and entirely exact. Look at the moonwalk. He walked forward but at the same time looked like he was moving backwards. Anybody who has ever tried and failed to do the Moonwalk knows it needs excellent muscle control and perfect timing. Jackson could complicate things further, doing the Moonwalk sideways. Or the toe stand. Pirouette several times, then stop on a dime, hop on your tiptoes, and hold for five seconds. Or the robot which truly looks like the halting, stop-and-go of a mechanical man. Like watching a reel of stills as it goes by you in less than normal speed. Or the Egyptian shoulder pops and spins with angular hand and arm moves. Or the fantastic synchronized group dance epitomized in Thriller. There were some smoke and mirrors (the anti-gravity lean was a trick in which pegs would rise up from the stage, click into the heels of Jackson s specially designed shoes, and support him as he leaned.) But all those other signature moves of Jackson were genuine, and as Johnson says, helped him in his basketball career. And what a career: five NBA championships for the Los Lakers in the 1980 s; three MVP awards; 12 all-star games; the all-time leader in assists per game with an average of 11.2; a member of the US Dream Team which won gold in the 1992 Olympics. Irrespective of his thinness, Jackson s physical genius could have made him into a sports star, which leads to the wider question: is dancing a sport? We say, why not? They both need strength, stamina, speed, balance, and dexterity. In both, you move your entire body, employ every muscle. Dancers need an extraordinary range of flexibility and muscular strength. The physical demands of dancing and how that compares with sport has been the subject of scientific research. Members of the Australian Ballet School and the Victorian Institute of Sport once got together to study each other's training methods. They found there were more similarities than they had originally anticipated. According to one study at the University of Freiburg, Germany, the muscle exertion and breathing rates of competitors in a two-minute ballroom dance were equal to those of cyclists, swimmers and an Olympic 800 meter runner over the same period of time. There is something called dancesport which in 2002, submitted a request to be considered for admission to the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee had already taken one cha cha step: it was because of the IOC that ballroom dancing became known as dancesport. But the IOC considers several factors in adding a sport, including the sport s history and tradition, popularity and cost. The verdict: the IOC asked dancesport to increase its spectatorship and television viewership. So dancesport will not be included in the 2012 Olympic Games, but perhaps 2016 could be its lucky year. Anybody who dances seriously knows it s a sport. There s no doubt it can be physically taxing. Dancers are required to work just as hard if not harder than many professional athletes. It could require up to six hours a day of practice, for years and years. And just like sports, dancers must sacrifice. They cannot go to bed late, can t smoke, can t eat anything they want. Above all that, dancers have to look glamorous while performing. All we need to do now is teach weightlifters to smile! Magic Johnson was always smiling perhaps because he played the way Jackson danced. They had a unity of force, bound and unbound by inner rhythm. Johnson s moves on the court matched in grace and timing the finest of Jackson s aesthetics. Johnson introduced a fast-paced style of basketball called Showtime, described as a mix of no-look passes off the fast break, pin-point alley-oops from half court, spinning feeds and overhand bullets under the basket through triple teams. It looked sometimes as though he threw the ball, not past an opponent, but through him. Magic Johnson was honored as one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history and it could be argued that he s the one player in NBA history who was better than yet another great MJ, Michael Jordan. That would be thanks in part to Michael Jackson.
