Everybody who has ever seen the video for “Smooth Criminal” remembers the same moment. Michael Jackson and his dancers, all in white suits and fedoras, lean forward at an impossible angle and stay there. No wires visible. No support. Just a row of men tipped forward at nearly 45 degrees, hanging in space. It is one of the most copied dance moves in history, and here is the part almost nobody knows. Michael Jackson holds a United States patent for it.
Not a trademark on the move. An actual engineering patent, filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office, for a piece of hardware he helped design. Patent number 5,255,452, titled “Method and Means for Creating Anti-Gravity Illusion”, granted on 26 October 1993. The inventors listed are Michael J. Jackson, Michael L. Bush and Dennis Tompkins, the two designers behind most of his famous stage looks.
Michael Jackson’s United States Patent Number 5,255,452
To understand why he needed it, you have to know how the video was actually made. In the 1988 clip, the lean was done the old-fashioned way. Jackson and his dancers were strapped into body harnesses attached to hidden cables, with the wires disguised by careful camera angles. It worked beautifully on film. The problem came later.
Jackson wanted to perform that lean live on stage, in front of tens of thousands of people, with nothing hidden. Harnesses were useless for that. They needed stagehands to clip and unclip the cables between numbers; they were visible from certain seats, and they killed his ability to dance freely. So instead of dropping the idea, he decided to solve the engineering problem.
Michael Jackson’s Rare BAD Tour Smooth Criminal Leans
The solution was beautifully simple. The team designed a special shoe with a V-shaped slot cut into the heel. Built into the stage floor was a small metal peg, or hitch, that could rise through the surface on cue. At the right moment in the routine, Jackson would slide his heels back, the slots would lock onto the pegs, and he was anchored to the stage. He could then lean forward well beyond his own center of gravity, hold it, and come smoothly back up. Then the pegs would drop away, and he was free to dance again.
The patent language is oddly poetic for a legal document. It describes a system allowing the wearer to lean forward beyond his center of gravity. And the engineering detail mattered enormously. Too loose a fit and the shoe could slip. Too tight and he would be stuck.
One thing worth saying, because it is the part people always get wrong. The shoes did not do the work for him. Doctors who have studied the move point out that even with your heels bolted to the floor, leaning at that angle demands extraordinary core and ankle strength. Most people who try it fall over or injure themselves. The shoes made it possible. Michael Jackson still had to be strong enough to do it.
The patent expired years ago, and the design is public now. Anyone can build the shoes. Almost nobody can do the lean