Margaret Fuhrer:
Hi, dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, content director for The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast. Welcome back to The Dance Edit Extra!
This episode features a conversation with the choreographer and director Vincent Paterson. Even if you’re not familiar with his name, you are definitely familiar with his work. For multiple decades, Paterson has been a dancer, choreographer, and director all over the entertainment industry. He is the artist behind some of Madonna and Michael Jackson’s most memorable dances, and behind some equally memorable moments in film and on the stage.
Paterson has a new memoir coming out soon, titled Icons and Instincts: Choreographing and Directing Entertainment’s Biggest Stars. The book gets into all of his experiences working with Hollywood and music-industry legends. It reveals how he handled the challenges that come with that territory—you know, dealing with artists who are both very brilliant and very sensitive—and it describes the path he carved through the rapidly evolving commercial dance scene of the ’80s and early ’90s. But it also talks about how he does not own the rights to much of his own choreography, due to exploitative practices that are still common in much of the entertainment industry. A whole chapter is devoted to that problem, and to his own active participation in the ongoing battle to secure proper crediting and compensation for commercial choreographers.
Vincent has been a quiet but hugely influential champion for dance artists in entertainment. He deserves all the flowers, and I hope many are coming his way with the publication of this memoir. Here he is.
[pause]
Margaret Fuhrer:
Vincent, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on The Dance Edit Extra today.
Vincent Paterson:
Thank you, Margaret.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I finished reading your book a few days ago, and it is a veritable page turner, because it’s full of all these incredible anecdotes about working with huge, just huge stars. But before we get into all that juice, if you will, I wanted to start with the “why” of the book. What inspired you to share your story at this particular moment?
Vincent Paterson:
Well, actually it was my co-author who pushed me into it. A Swedish documentarian, Kersti Grunditz, had done a documentary on me after pestering me—I say that kindly—for 10 years. I just didn’t want it done. And finally I said, “Okay, all right, I’ll do it.” And so she did a documentary called The Man Behind the Throne for Swedish television, and it aired at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And this woman, Amy Tofte, a writer, happened to be there for the showing. And she came up after and said, “You need to write a book.” And I said, “Amy, I’m not really a writer.” She said, “Have you written anything before?” And I said, “Well, every time I’ve worked out of the country, I go by myself and I keep journals.” And she said, “Well, could I read something?”
So the journals that I kept, literally each one was a book in itself, 350, 375 pages. And after she read a couple excerpts here and there she goes, “You can write, come on.” And I said, “Well, if you help me do it, I’ll do it.” And she said, “I think that your story is really an inspirational story for so many young artists who think, they see someone like you and all the success that you’ve had. And they think, Oh, I can do that. It’s easy. It’s easy.” And so I thought, and as did Amy, that it was important to let artists know that it’s not always the easiest path these days to get where you want to go. But if you really direct your energy to it and you’re kind, and you don’t hurt other people, and you really are focused on your goal and you work hard, you work your butt off to get what you want. If this is your true love, I really believe that life will take you on that path.
So that was a great deal of the reason that I wanted to write the book. I’m not really an author, I don’t have a dream to write another book, but I just thought some of these stories are important to share. And so people see not only a process—and I talk about the directing process, as well as the choreographic process, my own way of approaching them all—but to see that struggle is part of the game for anybody in the arts. Don’t try to believe it’s going to just happen. One in a billion, it happens for. For the rest of us, we have to fight our butts off to get to where we want to go and get to do the kind of work that we want to do. So that’s why I wanted to write it.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Kindness and hard work are sort of two threads that run throughout all of the stories in your book too.
One of the things that makes Icons and Instincts so compelling is that it offers these intimate snapshots of the entertainment industry and the music industry in the eighties and the early nineties, as the field that we know today as quote unquote “commercial dance”…
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
…was emerging and sort of figuring itself out. I was wondering if you could talk a little about what it was like to be part of that. What made that moment unique?
Vincent Paterson:
Well, it was so interesting because, MTV happened, and MTV changed everything, especially for dancers in the business. All of a sudden there was really a serious outlet where performing artists, musical performing artists could create something visual. And in the majority of these pieces, they either wanted to incorporate dancers or they wanted to be able to learn how to move a little bit themselves. So it was this explosion of dance really that happened in the eighties. And look at us now, my gosh, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing some sort of form of dance every single day, somewhere on some channel. TikTok, I mean, Instagram, Facebook everywhere.
And, even for me with dance—what’s happened with some of the creations that we did with Michael Jackson, back in the eighties, I’m still getting Facebook messages from people who I don’t know, who send me little videos of their children, two and three years old, dancing Michael Jackson moves. We began something in the eighties. I think really, I think it was MTV that was responsible. That has opened up our world, beginning with the US, but opened up our world to dance once again, the reintroduction of dance into our society and culture, especially of commercial dance I’m speaking.
Margaret Fuhrer:
You also talk about how during that time you were able to find and cultivate your own sort of creative family in the industry, and how important that was to you and to your career. Can you share a little bit of that here, who your family was and why it was so crucial to find these people?
Vincent Paterson:
Well, for me, I’m an artist, but I’m also, I’m just a family kind of person. That’s who I am. I’m a very social man. To divert for a minute here, when I work in Europe—which, I direct a lot of big projects in Europe, musicals—I’m sometimes scolded by the executive producers because I’m American, and I go and I speak and hang out with the costume people, the lighting people, the set, the guys who are building the sets. I get to know their names. I talk to them. Of course, there is a sort of selfish underlying reason for all of this, but that’s not my original intent. The selfish reason is that I believe that if you can create a family in every situation in which you find yourselves, then more likely than not everyone is going to work so hard to please me. And so that’s the selfish aspect, but more than that is, this is a difficult business. It’s always hard. So why not try to make everybody as happy as you possibly can, when we’re all trying to work against everything that comes against us in every situation?
The people that I began with in my family were in Los Angeles, were dancers who still, from the late seventies, are still some of my best friends. Some choreographers who, again, became my best friends, Michael Peters, Jackie and Bill Landrum, Joe Tremaine, who was the biggest jazz teacher out here and began dance conventions and still carries on like a 16 year old. And it was, to me, it’s just, if you can be creative, and if you can be creative in that kind of warm family situation, you create a bond that going from, in the commercial world, going from job to job, to job, to job, you never feel lost. You always feel somehow anchored. And because the entertainment industry is such a difficult business, when you can find those connections, with whomever you can find them with, and move forward. And oftentimes befriend those people that can accompany you through future projects, you can often use a lot of the same dancers, or when I was a dancer, be hired by the same choreographers. The language that you have to speak becomes less, you say fewer words, and you understand each other just with a gesture or a nod, sometimes even a thought that just gets projected before it even gets out of your mouth.
So that’s really, for me, the importance of creating these mini families. And also because it’s more fun, it’s just more fun. And if we can’t have fun in life, especially in this business, when we’re being artists, then give it up, just give it up.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And especially in the commercial industry, where it’s not like concert dance, where most people are working in companies and that family’s kind of made for you, you have those people around you all the time. It’s, you need to seek that out, to get that kind of—
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah!
Margaret Fuhrer:
—support, that kind of engagement.
Okay. So I think for a lot of readers, the biggest draw for your book will of course be these fabulous stories that you have to share about working with Madonna, working with Michael Jackson. Can you tantalize the listeners a little bit with a couple of your favorite anecdotes? I mean, I have some that I love particularly, but I’m curious to hear some of your favorites.
Vincent Paterson:
Well, it’s hard to pick out one. That’s why I wrote several chapters about each of them! Because I was so fortunate to have such an incredible opportunity presented to me, first with dancing with Michael Jackson, through “Beat It” and “Thriller,” and then to be called to create “Smooth Criminal” and then work with him on and off for another seventeen, 16 years.
With Madonna, you had to constantly prove yourself, whether it was an idea you were throwing out or a movement you wanted her to do. “Why, why? Well, what do you… I don’t know. I’m not sure about that. That doesn’t sound so great.” And then you’d have to show her and then she’d always say, “Okay, I love it.”
One thing I didn’t talk about in the book, and this is a tiny little moment, but you asked for a moment. When I was putting together Madonna’s MTV Marie Antoinette “Vogue” piece for her, we were rehearsing at Alley Cat studios. And all of a sudden an earthquake happened. It was just she and me, and an earthquake happened. And I grabbed her and we ran underneath the doorframe and just hugged each other till it was over. I mean, it only lasted for like 10 seconds, but it was just one of those moments I’ll never forget. I was hugging Madonna in the middle of an earthquake, you know? [laughter] So, anyway, those are two little stories for you.
Margaret Fuhrer:
That’s great. I’m going to be selfish now and ask about one of my favorite moments, which you do get into in the book, but I want listeners to hear it too. It’s the story behind Robin Williams’ “eclectic celebration of the dance” from The Birdcage, which, listeners, if you don’t know, it’s the, “You do Fosse, Fosse, Fosse, you do Michael Kidd…” I mean, so many of us love, love that thing. But you said this is a common misperception, that actually biographers have promoted, is that he improvised that. And no, you were very much the person crafting that moment. Can you talk about that?
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah. This is partially… I’m working very… I’ll just sidetrack for… So I’m working so hard with a young group of choreographers in Los Angeles to create the Choreographers Guild, for situations exactly like this. We don’t get credit for so many things that we do. And this is a case in point. I had worked with Robin several times before this. And so when Mike Nichols hired me to do The Birdcage, he brought me in from the first reading. And not only did I create and cast the dancers in that, but he asked me to create the musical sequences—to find an orchestrator who could bring in and orchestrate the music for what happened in the club with those dancers. But I sat there from the first table read till just about the last shot of the movie. And he said to me, “Vincent, anywhere in this film where you can put your mark, please just tell me.” So Robin and Christine Baranski dancing a little bit, Hank Azaria doing the Gloria Estefan piece in the kitchen, things that you think are all improvised, were never improvised. They were all choreographed.
So with this moment, they were shooting that scene and Robin came running up to me and pulled me behind the set and said, “Vincent, Vincent, I really, I need to do something. I’m just so exasperated playing the straight gay man, I’ve got to do something fun! Can you come up with something fun?” And I said, “Oh, okay. Can you go back and do that scene and come back when you finish the next take? I’ll come up with something.” So in that crazy moment, I put together the “eclectic celebration of the dance,” and put all those little quick moments that I could think of and showed it to Robin.
We went onto the set, shot it without telling Mike anything. And Robin performed it. And everybody laughed so loud that, of course, they couldn’t keep the take, because they thought it was just him busting up and doing his improv stuff. And Mike said, “Oh, Robin, that was really, really funny, but we have to go back and do it the way that we shot it.” And Robin goes, “Well, I didn’t create that. Vince created that.” And he said, “But can’t we do it again, please Mike.” And Mike said, “Well, I don’t, I’m not sure Robin, that’s not what Elaine wrote.” And Robin got down onto his hands and knees and crawled across the floor to Mike and said, “Please, Mike. Please.” And Mike said, “Okay, okay, okay, get up, get up. Let’s do it as written. And then we’ll take, we’ll do a couple takes of this, but I just want both of you boys to know it probably won’t be in the movie. So don’t be upset with me.”
So when it did appear in the movie, I was overjoyed. And the fun part is that many, many people, when you say The Birdcage, the first thing they say is…
Margaret Fuhrer:
Fosse, Fosse, Fosse!
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah! You just never know. You just never know.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, let’s talk about crediting for choreographers now. Because you have a whole chapter in the book dedicated to this. It’s obviously a very important issue to you personally and also in the commercial dance field generally.
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Why do you believe choreographers in the entertainment industry have been so undervalued for so long? What are the roots of that problem?
Vincent Paterson:
Money. That’s what I believe, money. Producers and directors don’t want to divide up their money and their residuals and share it. I think that’s part of it. I think the other part is lack of perception, that education, that many choreographers are… I mean, many directors are now finally after 30 years becoming familiar with what choreographers actually do. And with the vast amount of possibilities that a choreographer can do and ways that they can help them. So I see a lot less these days of directors being afraid of choreographers, afraid that they’re going to step in and try to take over their role or something, and a lot more where they appreciate choreographers. So I slowly see things changing. But I think that those two elements are the, or three elements, are the root. I think money, number one. I think ego and fear of loss of power by the director. And I think lack of education, lack of perception of what a choreographer really can do and how they can assist the director to make a better film or better TV show, better whatever it might be. I think really those are the three predominant roots of what has created this way of kind of squashing choreographers, pushing them behind the scenes or like me, “the man behind the throne.”
Hopefully choreographers now are getting, are having a bigger voice. Choreographers are stepping into directing world, choreographers are making their concerns much more vocal and letting the world know. Like, it’s interesting what’s happened after this pandemic. So many groups are unionizing, suddenly saying, “No, no, no. We deserve a seat at the table.” And that’s, I think the main issue that we have here. Credit is to me is the predominant one. I think I say in the book, when you create a piece of art, it’s your child.You put as much love and attention to it. I don’t care if I’m doing a commercial or I’m doing a feature film or I’m doing a musical. I still put the same amount of heart into it. It’s a different time length, period, but my heart and my energy and my devotion, my dedication, my focus is exactly the same on every project that I do. And I want recognition for it. I’ve had so much of my work stolen, used by so many people. Partially for me, many… In the beginning of MTV—this has changed thank heavens with celebrities—but the celebrity’s managers didn’t want the public to know that they didn’t create their own dance steps. They wanted them to think that they did everything in the world. Now, thank heavens, that has changed. Beyoncé, Gaga, all of them are more than willing to say, “Yeah, this is my choreographer. And I’m so happy with them, they’re great. And I love them.” And that didn’t happen for me at the beginning, but I was grateful just to have the opportunity to create that work. What happened to me on the other side was, unlike many people today, billions of people saw my work. Billions of people worldwide.
But my work has been stolen in so many cases. And because I’m a choreographer, even though my agents would complain, there was really not… We had no, nothing to fall back on to rectify the situation legally. We had no union, we had nobody to speak for us and we still don’t. And so hopefully this will, this creation of the CG will really change things for choreographers who are not only in the electronic media, but in the live non theatrical performing arena, like fashion shows all of these kinds of things. So that’s why I’m working so hard.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And I want to talk about Choreographers Guild in a second, but you’ve been a central voice in conversations about better protections for entertainment industry choreographers for decades now.
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Can you talk a bit about some of the ways that you have been involved in those efforts over the years?
Vincent Paterson:
Well, we began at the end of the eighties, there were a large group of us, about 20 people who are doing what the choreographers are doing now, bonding together and trying to lay down some laws and some rules. But things at that time were frantic with MTV. Yes, they would hire the principal choreographers to do the big stars. But when it came to the newer performing actors, singers that were coming onto the scene, they would hire a kid for $25, who could put a few dance steps together, because they were low budget productions. And they again, they thought, “Well, what does it matter if I get a $1000 a day choreographer or a $25 day choreographer?”
And so we tried to bond together to do this, but a lot of those choreographers were older, first of all. And what happens in this industry is you kind of, it’s changing a little bit now, but at that time you reached a certain age and you kind of were put out to pasture around 40 or 45. And then the new kids came up. So the 10 years of work that you tried to do, meeting, meeting, meeting, all those people disappeared, and you couldn’t do anything like strike, which is a very powerful tool to be able to use when you’re unionizing, because there were too many young kids coming in who would take over any job that they were offered. They didn’t care. They just wanted to get their name out there. They just wanted to work.
So that was our first big stab at it, was in the late eighties. Then once again, 10 years later, the late nineties we started again. And this time we tried to associate ourselves with SDC and see if we could combine with those union that was in existence for a long time, begun by Bob Fosse and very strong union, but for Broadway. It became more confusing because then the producers, and predominantly the producers in the commercial world, were like, “What does that have… What do we have to do with Broadway? We don’t have anything to do with Broadway. No, we’re not paying attention to that.” So then that was rejected. So now we’re at phase three here.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah.
Vincent Paterson:
But for me, anytime I could find a platform to talk about this—anytime I did an interview with anybody about any of my work, I was sure to mention something about this injustice and this inequality, hoping that the more people would hear it, the more it would begin to stick.
Margaret Fuhrer:
So now currently you’re involved in actually, I mean, two different, separate but related efforts happening in commercial dance. There’s the Choreographers Guild, this effort to unionize entertainment industry choreographers. And then also the work that JaQuel Knight has been doing to copyright commercial choreography. Why do you think there’s critical mass building right now around these ideas of really pushing for better for choreographers? What’s generating that momentum?
Vincent Paterson:
Well, and I’ll mention a third because I’m involved in three right now. The third is the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Getting an Oscar for best choreography?
Vincent Paterson:
Well, just—I’ll talk about that now then.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Okay.
Vincent Paterson:
Every year, if you belong to the Academy, you can sponsor anybody who wants to nominate, be nominated, has to have two sponsors and they both have to belong to the Academy. I’m very fortunate to belong to the Academy as a choreographer, but I’m listed under the only place they can put choreographers, which is a category called Members at Large. And I was nominated by Mike Nichols and Caleb Deschanel, who was a cinematographer, both in the Academy and had received Oscars, of course. And I got right in, but the few other choreographers who are involved in the Academy are directors. Rob Marshall, Debbie Allen, Adam Shankman are the three that I’m aware of. So this year I nominated Fatima Robinson, incredible Black female choreographer who has done so much work.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Everything!
Vincent Paterson:
So much work, and great film work. And also another friend of mine, John Carrafa, who had done a lot of work in film. He had two people nominate him. And 397 new invitees were admitted to the Academy and not one new choreographer.
And so I contacted a month ago, Bill Kramer, who is the new CEO of the Academy. And I just said, “Bill, 397 invitees and not one choreographer. Shame on us.” And I said, “You keep talking about inclusion, inclusion, inclusion.” I said, “We are the foster children. We are the unadopted children in this entertainment business. We need to be included. And that needs to start now. This is shameful.” Fortunately, he came right back the same day and said, “Let’s set up a meeting.” So I now have a meeting set up with him, with my agent, Julie McDonald, who has done so much for the dance industry, so much by creating the first agency, first of all, but just really has her hands in everything going on. She’s really been a pioneer and a real fighter for rights. And hopefully Debbie Allen is going to join us. So the three of us will talk to Bill about seeing what we can do to start including choreographers. I mean, way down the line, it will be getting an Oscar. Right now, it’s like, let’s get some choreographers into the AMPAS.
But this is the same, I’d be kind of reiterating what I said before. I think that the pandemic, with so many people working at home, really for everybody, I think across the board, but artists said—who were not able to work during those two periods, that two years of the pandemic period—”Do I really want to do this? Am I going to be able to exist in this?” And take a different… And they took a different look at the big picture finally and said, “Wow, I’ve been hearing little things and maybe this is a good time, us coming back together that we could all begin a conversation amongst one another.”
And that’s what happened. It started with about five people, and they just started Saturday morning chats. And over a year, those Saturday morning chats went up to 30 people, 40 people. We just had a mixer about two weeks ago, with close to 200 choreographers showed up. Phenomenal. That was just an amazing, we’ve always been in such competition with each other. And for the first time we’re uniting and saying, “No, we can do our own… We can each get our own gigs, but we have got to bond together to make this happen. There’s strength in numbers, and we have got to make this happen and it has to happen now.”
And I think we’ve also been so inspired by these other groups of people who have decided to unionize and really get what they feel is justified. And I think they were a great inspiration for us. The writers, the writers group did that. And there’s people that write jingles did that. And we were speaking with them, just a few other collective groups who all these years have just been scattered like we have. And finally through the… The pandemic seemed to be the issue. It seemed to be the inspirational period that pulled people together. And I think, I really believe that’s what happened for us too, but it began as a small group on Saturday morning and over two years, it’s become a really great movement now.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And I mean, talking about creative families…
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I know this is sort of a cliché now to say, “Oh, during the pandemic, we were all so separate and yet we all found each other,” but it’s true.
Vincent Paterson:
It is.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Especially this creative family really found—
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
—each other during that—
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
—period.
Vincent Paterson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, people started to miss each other too and we realized that, yes we are artists and yes, we do work, but there’s something a little bit more important. This bonding, this, I don’t know, just fealty, the exchange of conversation, of ideas, of love amongst us. And we’ve really found that. And it’s become a very, very supportive community. That was a community that was disengaged and filled with just solitary artists. And it’s a beautiful thing for me after 30 some years to see this finally happening. And I really hope it will. There’s a real potential for it to happen this time, so.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Does it… It seems like it feels different this time. Does it feel different?
Vincent Paterson:
It feels so different. And I’ll tell you why, because there are people like myself, like Kenny Ortega, like those of us who’ve been around for a long time—
Margaret Fuhrer:
Multi-generational.
Vincent Paterson:
And there are all these and JaQuel, who’s kind of in the middle of that coming up, and people of his realm. And then a lot of young, new choreographers who are seeing what we are doing and saying, “Oh my gosh, you guys are standing up for us. Well, we want to be part of this too.” So I think that unionizing or uniting of all of us has a lot of power and I’m hoping that’s going to make a big change.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Okay. So I’m going to zoom out a little bit now. The entertainment industry, it’s a vastly different landscape in many senses than it was when you were first starting out, as you’ve mentioned. What about the way dance looks and works in the entertainment world today worries you? And what about it excites you?
Vincent Paterson:
I’ll go with what excites me first. What excites me first is the multitude of dancers that exist. I think it’s so wonderful because first of all, dance, not only just as a joyful form of art, but physically that so many more people are physically in a much more healthy space. To be able to dance, to be able to do it you have to be healthy. So I see many things changing that way, and that makes me ecstatic. And the energy and dance everywhere, on television, live things happening in LA. Another friend of mine, an agent, also created an incredible dance competition live show that happens once every month or so. And that’s just so much fun. There’s dance everywhere these days. And that makes me excited.
What I find a little disappointing, and it could be my age, things change, but I’m a storyteller. And I was always trained, or the dance that I knew was kind of similar to the way music was written. You have verses, you have choruses, you have repetition of moments, and that’s the way that I always choreographed, not for commercials, of course, but for anything longer form than that you would be able to come back to a certain movement. So you would see something that was familiar and it kind of for me, I thought made you understand and appreciate the piece more. That just doesn’t happen anymore in commercial choreography. And I miss it. It feels to me, even though the movement is spectacular and dancers today can do so much more than I could or any dancer my period, when I was dancing, you have to know every kind of technique and you have to be a gymnast as well, it’s crazy. But I don’t see story anywhere in movement. I see no narrative.
To me, even though the movement can be spectacularly interesting, I kind of get a little bored after a while because it feels almost like an aerobics class, one piece after the next one step after the next, after the next and nothing ever repeats. And I miss that. I miss that repetition. I miss coming back, like a chorus in a song, that you can hear and repeat again and again. So that’s the negative for me. But again, it could be my age and what I like best or what I was trained with or the way I always created. But it seems to be what happens, almost every choreographer that I know, almost every piece of dance I see is created that way without a repetition of any kind of phrasing, so.
Margaret Fuhrer:
That’s so interesting. What do you think is behind that shift? Do you think it’s connected to this movement towards short form video that is happening all over social media? Or where do you see that change coming from?
Vincent Paterson:
I don’t know. I really don’t, honestly don’t know. I mean, I’ve been directing for the last 15 years, so 20 years now almost, predominantly directing. So I haven’t spent a lot of time in the choreography world and especially with younger choreographers and I don’t go to their dance classes and stuff. So I don’t, I’m kind of ignorant of the why behind that, so.
Margaret Fuhrer:
You have been directing all over the place. You are a writer now. What else in dance or beyond dance are you still eager to explore? What sort of bucket list items do you have yet to check off?
Vincent Paterson:
I think I’ve checked them all off choreographically, to be honest with you. I have, I think I mentioned it in my book, but I used to put everyone I wanted to work with on my refrigerator. Picture on my refrigerator. And I did this because I really believe in psychic energy. So I put these people on my refrigerator. So every time I walked by, I would see them whether it would be Glenn close or Bjork or Lars von Trier or whomever, and sure enough, I thought if I think about them, then that’s going to send some kind of wave out into the ethernet and maybe they’ll pick up on me and my vibe coming through. And every single person I had on that refrigerator I worked with.
So when I thought I was all done, I put Gaga on my refrigerator. She was the one person who I really, really wanted to work with. And this must have been maybe eight years ago, I guess, seven or eight years ago. And I actually did get a call. I was not home. I was working in Europe. I was, oh gosh, I was working in Europe and could not get away and couldn’t do it. And so that was kind of the end. She was the last person on my fridge. So choreographically, I don’t really have any more great hopes about doing something I’ve never done before. I feel like I’ve done it all and happily, and fulfillingly.
Directorially, I have another big project, a huge project, a new original project that I’m going back to Amsterdam in the fall to do a reading, round table reading and looks very positive that will happen. But for the first time, I’ve decided to hire another choreographer. I’m going to just do the directing. It has a lot of martial arts in it as well. And I thought, that’ll be enough for me to be handling the different areas of martial arts and dance and acting and singing and sets and everything else that goes along with it. So maybe I’ll give it up to a different choreographer. So it was a big decision. It’s a big decision to step away from that, because I’ve always been a…pleasant control freak, but I like to control. I like to have my hands on top of it all, so yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, you have to be that way, at least a little bit, to be a successful creative person.
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Otherwise it’s very hard.
Vincent Paterson:
Yeah. Especially a director. You have to… In the end, it all comes down to you anyway. I mean, you are going to get either the praise or the lack of praise, so you have to be involved, and I do stay involved because I love it too. I love every aspect of creating a piece of drama or a musical or dance, whatever it might be. I really like it all.
Margaret Fuhrer:
All right. So last question—big question. I want to come back to the title of your book, Icons and Instincts. Because of course we hear about these huge icons throughout the book, but in the last chapter in particular, you highlight the importance of following your creative instincts. And you say that doing so will help reveal truth through art. Can you talk about how you have found that to be true, and about why that search for truth is at the core of what you do?
Vincent Paterson:
I think that to be a good artist means you have to be a pure artist, which means you have to have pure intention. To me that begins at the very beginning with not wanting to harm, hurt, or step on anybody to get to where you want to be, to get the next gig. I think that is your basis for creating, for creativity, to be pure of heart, as much as you possibly can be. I think that a great deal of that is by listening to your inner self. And that’s what I also call instinct, that we all have it, no matter what, how we’ve been trained professionally or personally by our parents or whomever. And I think that we have to find who we really are inside to be the most positive and powerful artist that we can possibly be. And when we are confronted with situations and in this business, we are always confronted with situations, whether they be positive or negative, we can always ask for advice, which is good, but ultimately the final truth lies within ourselves, within our souls and our hearts. And that again, is what I call my instinct.
So sometimes my instincts, I would say 95% of the time, my instincts have led me to make great choices. A few I made for one reason that I thought was positive and I wish I had really stopped and listened to myself. I didn’t pay as much attention as I would have preferred. And the consequence of that is always that those projects didn’t wind up being the best projects of my career. So that’s just what I believe. There’s this voice in us that, we always have to listen and our instinct will tell us the really correct path to go, but it takes time.
And, I’ve learned over the years to meditate, to whether you meditate daily or whether when a situation arises, you just take the time, find a quiet place, sit alone, close your eyes, breathe, and really concentrate and ask yourself the deepest questions. Is this what I want? Am I accepting this for the right reason? Is it art over money? Sometimes it’s important to take the money, but most of the time, it’s more important to take the art and listen to what your heart says, listen to what your soul says, listen to what your instinct tells you and follow that path. And that will, I believe that will make you the truest artist that you can possibly be.
Margaret Fuhrer:
That’s a lovely place to end. Listeners, in the show notes, we have more information about Vincent’s book, Icons and Instincts: Choreographing Entertainment’s Biggest Stars, which will be available directly from the publisher Rare Bird on August 8th and then out on Amazon and everywhere else a few weeks later. Vincent, thank you so much. It’s been great talking with you.
Vincent Paterson:
Oh, thank you, Margaret. I really appreciate the time and I really appreciate your interest so, thank you so much.
[pause]
Another big thank-you to Vincent, and thanks to all of you for subscribing to The Dance Edit Extra. We’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Have a great weekend, everyone.