Paula Abdul: The Laker Girl Who Turned Choreography Into Pop Power

Dance Mogul Magazine · The Legacy · Screen Choreography · After the Stage

Paula Abdul: The Laker Girl Who Turned Choreography Into Pop Power

From a courtside dance squad to Janet Jackson’s rehearsal room, the Emmy stage, the top of the Billboard charts and the judge’s chair, Paula Abdul answered a question every young dancer eventually asks: what comes after the stage and the competition?

October 12, 2026 · Dance Mogul Magazine · Legacy Feature

The way Paula Abdul tells it, one of the most famous dance routines of the 1980s was built in a bathroom. She was sharing an apartment with other Laker Girls, there was no floor-length mirror anywhere else, and Janet Jackson needed choreography for a song called “Nasty.” So the young choreographer worked it out in front of the bathroom mirror. “I choreographed ‘Nasty’ — this is the craziest thing — in a half hour,” she has said.

The video that came out of that half hour won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography. It helped turn Janet Jackson into a pop icon on her own terms, and it put a former cheerleader still in her early twenties at the center of the music-video industry at the exact moment MTV was turning movement into money.

Three years later, Paula Abdul was the one in front of the camera. Her debut album, Forever Your Girl, became the first by a female artist to produce four Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles. Two decades after that, she was sitting at the judges’ table of one of the most-watched shows on American television, telling the next generation what she saw in them.

That is why Dance Mogul Magazine opens its After the Stage series with Paula Abdul. Her story is not only about fame. It is one of the clearest answers on record to the question every young dancer asks: what comes after the stage and the competition? For Abdul, the answer was authorship, then ownership, then mentorship. She turned dance labor into creative authority, used that authority to fund her own career, and spent the second half of her working life on the other side of the table, judging, producing and honoring the dancers who came next. More than four decades after her first audition, she is still adding chapters.

“I’m used to rejection, which I embrace because I have nothing to lose.”

— Paula Abdul, on auditioning for the Laker Girls (artist archive)

Paula Abdul at a Glance

A Valley Kid Who Fell for Gene Kelly

Paula Abdul was born in San Fernando, California, on June 19, 1962, and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She has said her dream of show business was lit by Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain: the idea that one dancer could carry a whole film on rhythm, charm and story. As a child she studied ballet, jazz and tap, and at 15 she won a scholarship to a dance camp near Palm Springs.

That Gene Kelly influence explains the artist she became. Abdul was never only interested in steps. She was drawn to dance as character, movement that tells the camera who you are. Years later she would describe her creative process in unusually personal terms: “Almost all my choreography had to do with things that I would remember from my dreams.”

She graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1980 and enrolled at California State University, Northridge, to study broadcasting. A degree in television was the safe plan. Dance had other ideas.

The Forum, 700 Hopefuls and the Choreographer’s Pen

During her freshman year, Abdul auditioned for the Los Angeles Laker Girls, the dance squad of the NBA’s Lakers, and was chosen from roughly 700 candidates. She has said, simply, “I joined the Laker girls for fun.” It was the early “Showtime” era, when the Forum in Inglewood was one of the most visible entertainment rooms in Los Angeles and record executives, actors and musicians sat courtside.

She did not stay in the line for long. Within a year she was the squad’s head choreographer, and she pushed the routines toward real dance and away from the gymnastics of traditional cheerleading. Reference biographies note that she considered some of that Laker Girls work among her best choreography. She stayed with the squad until 1986.

For young dancers, this is the first lesson of her career: her first leadership role came from inside the ensemble. She learned the room, earned the trust, and was handed the pen. And because the room was the Forum, the audience included the people who could change her life. As she remembered it, “There were all sorts of calls to the Forum office with job offers — TV commercials, TV shows.”

1984: The Jacksons Were Watching

Members of the Jacksons saw Abdul’s work at a Lakers game, and in 1984 she was hired to choreograph the music video for “Torture” from their Victory album. She was in her early twenties and was being asked to give direction to one of the most famous dancing families in the world. She later admitted she was “not quite sure how [she] got through that.”

The video became her calling card. Reference biographies say it led to her selection as choreographer for the Jacksons’ 1984 Victory Tour. DMM reports that tour credit as it appears in her biographies; contemporaneous tour programs confirming the exact scope of her work have not been located. Either way, the offers multiplied, and eventually she had to step away from the Laker Girls to keep up.

The Bathroom Mirror and the Control Era

In 1985, by Abdul’s account, A&M Records executive John McClain asked her to work with Janet Jackson, who was preparing Control, the album produced with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis that would make her a superstar. Abdul choreographed the videos for “What Have You Done for Me Lately,” “Nasty” and “When I Think of You,” all released in 1986, and several credit lists add “Control” itself. She also appears in cameos in “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Nasty.”

The look of those videos, with sharp unison ensemble work, attitude delivered on the beat and street-informed phrasing framed for television, became part of how mid-1980s pop was seen. Abdul won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography for “Nasty.”

DMM wants to be precise here, because credit matters in our culture. That vocabulary was not one person’s invention. It grew from Janet Jackson’s own performance instincts, from the dancers in the room, from the directors and editors, and from the Black and Latino social-dance traditions that fed all of 1980s pop. DMM’s own archive describes the “Nasty” era as the moment when dancers, formations and club-informed movement became inseparable from the music, with choreographers including Paula Abdul helping establish the model. Abdul’s contribution was the choreographic architecture: organizing that energy into routines built for the camera.

“I shared an apartment with some Laker Girls and there was no floor-length mirror, so I did it in the bathroom.”

— Paula Abdul, on choreographing “Nasty” (artist archive)

There is one more detail from those rehearsals that changed everything. Abdul has said she sang along while teaching the routines, and that Janet Jackson complimented her voice and encouraged her to record. The artist who would become a pop star was discovered as a singer while doing her job as a choreographer.

The Choreographer Everyone Called

Through the second half of the 1980s, Abdul’s résumé ran across rock, pop and R&B. Reference biographies credit her with dance routines for ZZ Top’s “Velcro Fly” and Steve Winwood’s “Roll With It,” along with work for Toto, the Pointer Sisters, Debbie Gibson, Taylor Dayne and George Michael’s “Monkey.” She is also credited with staging for Kool & the Gang’s 1987 tour and George Michael’s 1988 Faith Tour.

Hollywood called next. Abdul received choreography credits on studio films including Can’t Buy Me Love (1987), where she also appears as an uncredited dancer, The Running Man (1987), Coming to America (1988), Action Jackson (1988), The Doors (1991), Jerry Maguire (1996) and American Beauty (1999). Range was the professional skill underneath it all. Making a rock band look natural on camera, a comedy royal wedding feel festive and an R&B star look iconic are three different problems, and she solved all of them.

The Tracey Ullman Show, the Oscars and an Emmy

On television, Abdul choreographed The Tracey Ullman Show on the young Fox network. The Television Academy records a 1988 nomination and a 1989 Primetime Emmy win for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for that work. In January 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported she had been chosen to choreograph the Academy Awards telecast. That same season she opened the 17th Annual American Music Awards with a performance staged on a moving platform. “The moving platform was all done by remote control!” she later recalled.

Forever Your Girl: Betting on Herself

Here is the chapter every dancer with a bigger dream should study. Abdul did not wait to be discovered as a singer. She recorded a demo between choreography jobs, and once Virgin Records America signed her, she has said she used savings from her choreography work to help bring in songwriters and producers. She invested dance income in her own next chapter.

The early returns were slow. Her first single, “Knocked Out,” peaked at No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her second, “(It’s Just) The Way That You Love Me,” stalled. Then San Francisco radio station KMEL began playing “Straight Up,” the label shifted its promotion, and the song climbed into the Top 20 before a video had even been shot.

When the video came, it was a choreographer’s film: black and white, produced by Propaganda Films, directed by a then-rising David Fincher and choreographed by Abdul herself, with an opening tap break and a cameo from Arsenio Hall. “Straight Up” reached No. 1 in February 1989 and stayed three weeks. The clip won four MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Female Video, Best Choreography, Best Editing and the first-ever Best Dance Video.

“Forever Your Girl,” “Cold Hearted” and “Opposites Attract” followed it to No. 1, making Forever Your Girl the first debut album by a female artist with four Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers. On October 7, 1989, 64 weeks after it entered the chart, the album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200, still cited as the longest climb to the top. It spent ten weeks there, was certified seven-times Platinum, and by 1998 Billboard reported it was the most successful album Virgin Records had ever released.

The videos show a choreographer’s brain at work. “Cold Hearted,” also directed by Fincher, pays tribute to Bob Fosse and All That Jazz. “Opposites Attract,” created and directed by animators Candace Reckinger and Michael Patterson, pairs Abdul with an animated partner, MC Skat Kat, and won the 1991 Grammy for Best Music Video. Abdul choreographed the cat’s moves to mirror her own, and the movement reference for those animated moves was Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers, the popping innovator of Breakin’. Read his full story in DMM’s Boogaloo Shrimp legacy feature.

Her second album, Spellbound (1991), produced two more No. 1s, “Rush Rush” and “The Promise of a New Day.” With six Hot 100 chart-toppers in all, Abdul tied Diana Ross for the third-most among female solo artists at the time. In 1991 she became the first entertainer inducted into the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards Hall of Fame, and that December she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Credit Record, Kept Honest

Four decades of credits get blurred in retelling. DMM separates what is credited to Abdul by name from shared or collective work and from claims that appear only in biographies.

Biography credits are reported as published and have not been matched to original production credits.

The Judge’s Chair: A Second Act in Mentorship

In 2002, Abdul joined Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson as one of three original judges on American Idol, staying through 2009. She was known as the encourager on the panel, the judge who saw the human being behind the audition. The Television Academy lists her with the show for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program every year from 2003 through 2007. The seasons she judged produced winners including Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood; at the 2026 American Music Awards, Abdul called herself a “proud mommy” when she sat beside Underwood.

On dance television she was back in her first language. She was a main judge and executive producer on CBS’s Live to Dance (2011), describing it as less about “competition” than “celebration.” She was a main judge on So You Think You Can Dance for Seasons 12 and 13 and on So You Think You Can Dance Australia, a panelist on Fox’s The Masked Dancer, and a guest judge on Dancing with the Stars. In 2023 she joined the producing team of the Broadway musical How to Dance in Ohio.

This is the heart of the After the Stage question. Competition shows ask young performers to prove themselves. Abdul built a second career on the other side of the table: evaluating, guiding and producing the next generation. That is not a step down from the spotlight. It is a different kind of authority, and it was built on the trained eye of a choreographer.

“I always wanted to get back on stage, because I missed it.”

— Paula Abdul, on returning to touring, 2017

Watch: Paula Abdul in Motion

Eight films that trace the arc: her own account of being discovered, the Control era, television choreography, the records that made her a star, the street-dance link behind MC Skat Kat, and the stage show that closed the 1980s.

The Stage, Screen & Judges’ Table Tracker

DMM built this tracker so readers can follow a living legacy the way it actually unfolds: tour by tour, seat by seat. For a choreographer who became a star, the “travels” are tours, residencies and the judging chairs where she now passes knowledge on. Every row has a published source. It is a floor, not a ceiling.

Sources: Wikipedia tour and series records; LA Phil (Aug 7, 2024); Dance Spirit (Nov 2025); BroadwayWorld (Nov 2025); Television Academy. A planned 21-date Canadian tour (Sept–Oct 2024) was cancelled for injury and is not counted.

Documented tracker entries per decade · bars drawn to scale

Counts are the rows in the table above, not every performance or broadcast. The 1990s look thin because a single 98-show world tour counts as one row, and the 2002–09 Idol run is one row for eight seasons.

The Career Ladder: How a Dancer Became the Decision-Maker

Dance knowledge does not survive in museums. It survives in bodies, and it travels when someone is paid to carry it. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that nearly all choreographers begin their careers as dancers. Abdul’s career is a working model of every rung after that, and each rung created paid work for other dancers, directors, editors and crews.

The Lineage: Who Shaped Abdul, and Who She Shaped

Relationships drawn only from published credits and her own accounts. Influence on later artists is described as a model, not a claim of direct teaching.

Worldwide Impact: From the Forum to Four Continents

Her videos and television work reached audiences far beyond these countries through broadcast and syndication. That reach is real but cannot be counted, so it is not included in the totals.

By the Numbers: The Economy Around Paula Abdul’s Art

Choreography is culture, and it is also work. The figures below show the scale of the projects Abdul’s dancing and choreography moved through. DMM keeps them in separate tiers, because a film’s box office is not a choreographer’s paycheck and a whole industry is not one artist’s output.

Tier 1 · Projects Abdul choreographed or led

These figures describe the records, tours and films, not Abdul’s share of them. They show the audiences her work reached.

Worldwide gross · bars drawn to scale

Worldwide theatrical gross, nominal dollars. Bar widths: each film ÷ American Beauty ($356.3M) × 100. $356.3M = 100.0%; $288.8M = 81.1%; $273.7M = 76.8%; $38.1M = 10.7%. Her credits cover specific sequences, not whole films; the totals belong to the films and their studios. Not counted: Can’t Buy Me Love, Action Jackson, The Doors and Big, where DMM did not verify both the credit and the gross.

Inside one tour · the arithmetic

Nine venues out of 98 shows, so this is not the tour total, and gross is not the artist’s income. The point is the chain: a show built around a choreographer’s staging sold out arenas, and every date paid dancers, crew, venues and local workers. Not adjusted for inflation.

Tier 2 · The industries this work feeds

Context only. These are whole industries, not the value of screen choreography or of any one artist. Bar widths: 31.7 = 100%; 5.0 ÷ 31.7 = 15.8%.

Abdul’s personal earnings, fees and royalties are not published in any reliable source, and DMM does not estimate them. Online “net worth” figures are guesses and are not used here.

How the Dance Traveled, and What Belongs to Everyone

Music-video choreography was built by a generation, not by one person. Michael Peters shaped “Beat It” and “Thriller.” Anthony Thomas choreographed “Rhythm Nation.” Janet Jackson, her dancers and her directors shaped the Control look alongside Abdul. Street dancers like Boogaloo Shrimp supplied the movement that made even a cartoon cat feel real. DMM does not call Abdul the inventor of the dance-centered pop video, and the record does not need that claim.

What the record does show is distinct and important. Abdul was one of the first choreographers of the MTV era to turn behind-the-camera authorship into front-of-camera ownership. She proved a choreographer could become the name above the title, and then she spent decades making space at the table for the next generation of performers.

Where Is Paula Abdul Now?

As of October 2026, Abdul remains active in public life. On May 25, 2026, she co-presented Song of the Year with Jason Derulo at the American Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. In November 2025 she received the Legacy Award at the World Choreography Awards in Los Angeles, a recognition from the choreography community itself. In 2025 she also sat on the panel for Slovakia’s Let’s Dance and guest-judged Canada’s Drag Race.

Her last major tour run was the 2024 Magic Summer Tour with New Kids on the Block and DJ Jazzy Jeff, followed by three nights at the Hollywood Bowl with Boyz II Men in September 2024. That same month she cancelled a planned 21-date Canadian tour, telling fans she needed a procedure for recent injuries and promising to return “stronger.” DMM has not found new 2026 tour dates from official channels and will update this page when they are announced.

A Living Legacy, and Why DMM Is Tracking It

Most legacy writing arrives too late, after the records are lost and the people who could correct them are gone. DMM’s Legacy series does the work while the artist is still working, and this page will grow as Abdul’s record does.

A living legacy is worth tracking for three practical reasons. First, accuracy: an artist who is still active can settle claims that otherwise harden into myth, like the “two Emmys” repeated across the internet. Second, access: young dancers can still see her judge, teach and perform, and learn from the source. Third, value: when a choreographer’s authorship is documented, festivals, award bodies, universities and brands can cite it, honor it and pay for it. The 2025 World Choreography Awards Legacy honor is exactly that recognition at work.

The DMM Archive Connection

Paula Abdul already sits on DMM’s map of the culture. In The American Social Dance Movement, she has her own card as a choreographer who moved from behind the camera into public celebrity, and she is named in the archive’s entry on Janet Jackson’s “Nasty.” DMM’s Boogaloo Shrimp legacy feature tells the MC Skat Kat story from the dancer’s side, and DMM’s Janet Jackson coverage follows the artist whose videos made Abdul’s name. This feature connects those threads and opens the After the Stage series, which continues with Rosie Perez, who also discovered DMM legacy subject Henry Link, and Jennifer Lopez.

What Comes After the Stage and the Competition

Every dancer reaches a moment when the next audition, the next battle or the next season is not enough of a plan. Abdul’s career shows four doors that open after the stage, and she walked through all of them.

Career & Cultural Timeline

Why Paula Abdul’s Legacy Matters to Dance Mogul Magazine

Dance Mogul Magazine was founded on a simple conviction: dance is a bridge to a better life, and the people who build that bridge deserve accurate credit from their own community. Since 2010 DMM has documented dancers, choreographers and creative directors whose work shapes what the world sees, especially the contributors whose names fade when the spotlight moves.

Abdul’s story fits that mission from two directions. It is a credit story: her choreographic authorship is real, documented and too often buried under her later fame, and it sits inside a larger community of dancers whose movement also powered those videos. And it is an empowerment story: proof that a dancer can move from labor to leadership to ownership, and still be honored for the dance at the root of it all. It reflects DMM’s values: contribution before attention, craft before celebrity, and people before popularity.

What Dance Would Be Missing Without Paula Abdul

What Future Generations Can Learn From Paula Abdul

1. Embrace rejection. “I’m used to rejection,” she said. With nothing to lose, every audition is a free shot.

2. Lead from where you stand. She went from dancer to choreographer inside the same squad.

3. Work with what you have. No studio mirror? She built “Nasty” in a bathroom in half an hour.

4. One great credit opens ten doors. “Torture” led to Janet. Janet led to television, film and the Oscars.

5. Invest dance money in your next chapter. She funded her own music with choreography income. That is ownership thinking, the core of DMM’s Beyond Wealth series.

6. Range is protection. Rock bands, R&B stars, comedy television and studio films kept her working when trends changed.

7. The judge’s chair is a stage too. Mentoring, judging and producing are how a dancer’s knowledge becomes the next generation’s foundation.

Before the Star, the Dancer

It started with a Valley kid watching Gene Kelly dance in the rain. It picked up speed on the floor of the Forum, found its voice in front of a bathroom mirror, and then did something few dancers had done before: it walked out from behind the camera and took the whole frame.

Forty years later, Paula Abdul is still in the room where dancers are judged, honored and introduced to the world. The stage was never the finish line. For her, it was the training ground for everything that came after, and she has spent the rest of her career holding the door open.

Paula Abdul: Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Paula Abdul?

Paula Abdul is an American choreographer, dancer, singer and television personality. She began as a Los Angeles Laker Girl and head choreographer, choreographed for the Jacksons and Janet Jackson, won a Primetime Emmy for choreography, became a chart-topping pop star and was an original judge on American Idol.

Was Paula Abdul a choreographer before she was a singer?

Yes. She choreographed for the Laker Girls, the Jacksons (“Torture,” 1984), Janet Jackson (1986) and The Tracey Ullman Show before releasing her debut album, Forever Your Girl, in 1988.

Which Janet Jackson videos did Paula Abdul choreograph?

She choreographed “What Have You Done for Me Lately,” “Nasty” and “When I Think of You” from the 1986 Control era, and won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography for “Nasty.”

How many Emmys has Paula Abdul won?

The Television Academy credits her by name with one Primetime Emmy: Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for The Tracey Ullman Show in 1989. The 1990 choreography Emmy went to the American Music Awards broadcast she opened, but the Academy does not name an individual for it.

Who danced as MC Skat Kat?

MC Skat Kat is animated. Abdul choreographed the cat to match her own moves, and Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers performed the reference movement the animators used.

What record did Forever Your Girl set?

It was the first debut album by a female artist to produce four Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles, and its 64-week climb to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 is still cited as the longest on record.

Was Paula Abdul a judge on So You Think You Can Dance?

Yes. She was a main judge for Seasons 12 and 13, a guest judge in Season 10, and a main judge on So You Think You Can Dance Australia in 2014.

What is Paula Abdul doing now?

In May 2026 she co-presented Song of the Year at the American Music Awards. In 2025 she received the World Choreography Awards Legacy Award and judged Slovakia’s Let’s Dance and Canada’s Drag Race.

Sources & Further Viewing

© 2026 Dance Mogul Magazine LLC · The Legacy Series · A Black-owned dance and empowerment publication since 2010