Moonwalk (dance)

The moonwalk, or backslide, is a popping dance move in which the performer glides backwards but their body actions suggest forward motion. It became popular around the world when American singer Michael Jackson performed the move during the performance of "Billie Jean" on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which was broadcast in 1983; he later incorporated it in tours and live performances. Jackson has been credited as renaming the "backslide" to the moonwalk and it became his signature move.

Holman (2004) identified early evidence for the moonwalk in a statement made by Arthur Marshall, who was an African American composer of ragtime music. Marshall stated, "If a guy could really do it, he sometimes looked as if he was being towed around on ice skates. The performer moves forward without appearing to move his feet at all by manipulating his toes and heels rapidly."

Holman also states: "A dance that appeared around the turn of the century in Black minstrel shows called Stepping on the Puppy's Tail also had an amazing resemblance to the moon walk. Stepping on the Puppy's Tail was described as moving each foot alternately backwards 'like a horse pawing the ground.'"

There are many recorded instances of the moonwalk; similar steps are reported as far back as 1932, used by Cab Calloway and Charlie Chaplin. In 1985, Calloway said that the move was called "The Buzz" when he and others performed it in the 1930s.

The 1935 animated short film Dancing on the Moon, directed by Dave Fleischer and part of the Color Classics series of animated short films, contains a segment where the protagonist cat dances the moonwalk.

In 1943, Bill Bailey performed the first on-screen backslide in the movie The Cabin in the Sky. This dance move closely resembles what was later called the moonwalk. In 1944, Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien portrayed something similar to the move in their performance of "Under the Bamboo Tree" in Meet Me in St. Louis, though their performance lacks the illusion created by the genuine moonwalk.

In 1958, on the Pat Boone Show, Dick Van Dyke performed a similar variation of the moonwalk and camel walk in his comedy routine called "Mailing a Letter on a Windy Corner".

In 1955, it was recorded in a performance by tap dancer Bill Bailey. He performs a tap routine, and at the end, backslides into the wings. The French mime artist Marcel Marceau used it throughout his career (from the 1940s through the 1980s), as part of the drama of his mime routines. In Marceau's "Walking Against the Wind" routine, he pretends to be pushed backwards by a gust of wind.