The Lean: the move so impossible
he patented it

Forty-five degrees past what balance allows. Human ankles cannot do it. So Michael Jackson invented a way — and filed it with the United States Patent Office.

In the 1988 Smooth Criminal short film, Michael and his dancers lean forward to forty-five degrees — heels on the ground, bodies straight as planks — and hold. In the film it was done with wires. The problem came later: Michael wanted to do it live, on stage, every night. No wires. No camera tricks. In front of eighty thousand people.

US Patent No. 5,255,452

The solution he co-invented with two of his costume designers is beautiful in its simplicity: a shoe with a V-shaped slot in the heel, and a peg that rises from the stage floor at the exact moment of the move. The dancer slides forward, the heel catches the peg, and suddenly the ankle isn't holding the body — the whole shoe is anchored to the stage. The patent, titled "Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion," was granted on October 26, 1993, listing Michael J. Jackson as first inventor.

Still not easy

The shoes remove the impossible part, not the hard part: the lean still demands ferocious core and Achilles strength, and dancers who have tried the original patented shoes describe the move as genuinely painful. Physicists have published papers analyzing the biomechanics. Michael performed it live for nearly a decade, eight shows a month, smiling.