Beat It and MTV Television/Video 1980 1980s Movies & MTV Films in the eighties continued to utilize tap dance for the trend in nostalgia and because of the world-wide acceptance of social dance and the creation of the music video, which became one of the greatest opportunities since the invention of the camera for dance makers. MTV, a new television network, premiered on August 1, 1981 and popularized the music video, first produced in limited quantities to spur record sales, but by the decade's end, all-music television became an industry. If in previous decades the evolution of stage dance had influenced dance on film, it was now the music video that produced the greatest impact on filmed dance since the 1930s innovations of Fred Astaire and Busby Berkeley. Dance was at first used sparingly behind and the non-dancing singing stars. But it was the collaboration of Broadway jazz dancer Michael Peters and Martin Scorsese, and the song-and-dance talents of Michael Jackson on the music video "Beat It" that contributed to the acceptance of dance-enriched music television videos, and changed the face of what had been a basically white exposure on MTV, as Jackson began to dominate the music industry. Scorsese discussing directing Jackson's historic "Beat It" choreographed by Peters said: "The dance steps were worked out to combine with the camera movement so that the camera itself is dancing and the dolly grips were as important as some of the dancers. I wanted to make something classical the way the great choreographers moved in the late 40s and early 50s and the films that I saw growing up . . . . Maybe the video itself is the dance. You know, the piece of film itself and the impression that it gives to the mind when you're flashing by on those channels…and that maybe speaks another language to a younger generation. Who knows." (Scorcese in Billman 158) MTV choreographer Vincent Patterson discerned the power of the beat and the rhythmic pattern of cuts in the transference of the visual and aural message in the music television video: "There is a power in using dance in a very quick-cut, chopped up, edited version. Dance is not always used in that format, but it can be used merely for energy or excitement, as much as a visual or costume change or lighting design." Michael Peters, a former Broadway dancer (Jerome Robbins' West Side Story) capsulated the significance of the new medium: "Music videos are indicative of what we are, the way our culture has gone--instant gratification…my attention span is this short, so you better do it really fast because otherwise, I'm gonna hit that remote and change the channel." (Patterson and Peters in Billman 158) Though the rhythmic cutting of the choreography was in effect a butchering of the dance, the fragmenting of the images became an abstract rhythmic visualization in which was not dissimilar to tap dance; the rhythmic propulsion of the beat, therefore underlies the power and propulsion of the imagery and is thus related to jazz rhythms. While the rhythmic propulsion of tap dance was an underlying aspect of music television, several videos were produced in which tap dance was the subject and central metaphor, including Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" and "(It's Just) The Way That You Love Me." Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.183