At one point in the 1989 music video for Madonna’s song “Express Yourself,” the singer crawls in a slinky dress under a long table. She then proceeds to stick out her tongue and lap up milk from a bowl like a cat.
The video’s so-to-speak vibe is in large part due to choreographer Vincent Paterson.
Paterson, who now primarily works as a director, describes teaching the superstar how to elegantly hold a cigarette in a cigarette holder like an old film siren and how to execute the suggestive crawling scene. “There’s so much more that we do than just create ‘5, 6, 7, 8,’” he says.
Yet working with big Hollywood names doesn’t necessarily mean that choreographers receive similar guaranteed minimum wages or benefits as their entertainment industry peers. That’s…
