Word: holley
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...Wednesday night's rehearsals, the middle-aged man of 50 was showing the kids how it's done. "He'd take the stage with this group of dancers, all in their 20s, but you couldn't take your eyes off him," says Dorian Holley, vocal director for Michael Jackson's This Is It series of concerts, planned to begin this month in London. During Jackson's run-through at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, "he was giving a clinic to those dancers," recalls Bashiri Johnson, the percussionist on the tour. "Whenever he would do a move, he'd raise...
...perspective all the time, saying, 'This is what we're here for, to spread a message of love and taking care of the planet, that we want people to understand it's very, very dear and not to take it for granted,'" Holley tells TIME. (See TIME's top 10 Jackson moments...
Until the last hour of rehearsals, Jackson maintained a ferocious, perfectionist pace, says Holley, who, after decades working with the singer, says he was still astonished by his vocal and physical prowess. Some in the public questioned whether Jackson, at 50, would still be able to command a stage, and recent reports published Sunday in Britain's Daily Mail said that Jackson had been too feeble to dance, sing or, at times, even speak in the weeks leading up to his death. But, Holley - despite his own early concerns about a lack of rehearsal time leading up to the first...
...text message on Thursday afternoon that gave Holley the first hint of bad news - a note saying Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. Neither he nor the crew knew how to react to the uncertainty, so they did what they always did - they went in to rehearse. Except this time, as fans all over the world from Los Angeles to New York City to Tokyo to Buenos Aires played his music, sang his songs and emulated his dance in tribute, Holley says the crew couldn't bring themselves to touch the music...
Jackson had been preparing to take the world back, Holley says, and during the singer's final night, he finally knew he was ready. "You would think that, on the one hand, the world has kind of beaten him up, and you could forgive him for having some trepidation and fear. But he didn't have any of that," says Holley. "Words fail to describe what people would have seen with the tour. I couldn't even imagine until last week when it became physically apparent [on the set]. He was ready to show the world, and I so wish...