12/06/2013 - The documentary, directed by Swedish Kersti Grunditz retraces Vincent Paterson’s extraordinary career as choreographer to Michael Jackson and Madonna. In competition at the Bologna Biografilm

Vincent Paterson was a behind the scenes man, whispering to the stars, telling them how they should move, creating something through them that had never been seen before. Paterson did it for Michael Jackson and Madonna. He invented the dance moves that made them unforgettable, becoming the choreographer to the world (who has not done, at least once, Michael Jackson’s famous crotch touching move?). The American choreographer’s extraordinary career is told in Swedish documentary The Man Behind the Throne by Kersti Grunditz, which is in the running in the international competition section of the 9th Biografilm Festival in Bologna (7-17 June).

The film introduces us to Paterson, who is only just over 50 today, as he is working on the choreographies of Viva Elvis for the Cirque du Soleil. We see him a little after in the Beat It video from the early 1980s: he was one of the two heads of the gangs that come face to face brandishing knives when Jackson separates them. They end up all dancing together. That is where the king of pop first noticed him. He liked the moves he was doing. A few years later, he asked him to choreograph the video of what would become one of his greatest hits: Smooth Criminal. "I want something that has never been seen before,” Jackson asked him. That is where the hand on the crotch move was born - the same that was later done by Madonna in Express Yourself (Paterson choreographed the entire Blond Ambition Tour). 

Paterson’s private videos, seen in the documentary are spectacles in and of themselves. Jackson and him in front of the mirror rehearsing for hours. The star is in his stage clothes throughout (white suit, complete with hat and gaiters) in order to accentuate the effect of movement on his clothes. Then there is Madonna who is rehearsing her Like a Virgin moves, the same moves that saw her during the Blond Ambition Tour simulate a frenetic sex scene on a bed.

The relationship between him and the singer did not end well. “I haven’t heard from her since 2000,” the choreographer and guest during the Biografilm festival revealed. “Ever since I turned her offer to work with her down in order to work on the Dancer in the Dark by Lars von Trier choreographies. She told me I preferred Bijork to her.” His work with von Trier is yet another career highlight. The train dance scene in Dancer in the Dark is filmed by 150 cameras in this atypical musical, which earned the Danish director a Palme d’Or in Cannes.  

Vincent Paterson says he will stop working when he is dead. His brilliance, combined with his passionate outlook and his kind manners make you want to become a ballerina and do things that have never been seen with him, “the man behind the throne” to whom the king and queen of music owe much. 

(Translated from Italian)