Where are they now? Fatima Robinson

Choreographer Fatima Robinson made her name at just 21 years old working on Michael Jackson’s short film “Remember The Time”.

We all know her moves from the iconic Pharaonic video, dancing on screen with the King of Pop himself.

Two decades later, she orchestrated the moves for over 1,000 performers at the Super Bowl halftime show, she became Beyonce’s director of Choreography. Among her work, she is responsible for Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” dance routine, directed and choreographed The Black Eyed Peas’ “Hey Mama” and “My Humps”.

She has also worked on shows and movies such as “Dreamgirls” (2006) and “The Wiz Live!” (2015)

Now she has choreographed the latest version of “The Color Purple”, directed by Blitz Bazawule. “Not only is her cultural depth so incredible,” he said, “but also she understands this journey that has been the African American movement, starting of course from the continent all the way through the diaspora.”

Fatima had no formal dance training when she started popping up in Los Angeles clubs in the late ’80s and early ’90s. She was working as a shampoo girl at her mother’s hair salon and going to cosmetology school, then letting loose at night: “I always say, clubs are my classroom.”

Toni Basil, the singer, dancer and choreographer, spotted her and offered her an audition for the rapper Young MC. That didn’t work out but the gigs that followed opened Robinson up to the hip-hop stratosphere. “When I danced for Big Daddy Kane, Jay-Z was our hype man,” she said. “I’ve known all these people for years.”

After she did “Remember the Time,” the nine-minute Michael Jackson short, directed by John Singleton and also starring Eddie Murphy, Iman and Magic Johnson, she began taking classes, especially in African dance.

Today, at 52, she is a choreographer, director, producer but her true love is still the dance.

And just because it is beautiful, let’s watch Michael Jackson’s “Remember The Time”: