You might not know Fatima Robinson by name — but you certainly know her moves. 

The veteran dancer/choreographer — most recently tapped for the musical “The Color Purple” — broke big 

at age 21 by arranging dances for Michael Jackson in his 1991 “Remember the Time” video.

 She’s since worked with Beyoncé on her “Be Alive” performance at the Academy Awards, and on such TV shows as “black-ish” 

and “American Idol” and the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show at SoFi Stadium. And this year, she joined the film academy as one of the very few choreographers admitted. 

Robinson is fast on her feet but slowed down for a moment to talk with The Envelope about dancing in clubs, 

the unexpected assist from Aaliyah in landing her the “Color Purple” job, and why dancing is her direct line to God.

I always say clubs are my classroom. I would spend hours there. But once I realized I wanted to pursue my hobby as a career, I started taking African and belly dance and [other] classes to mix with my style. I’m not making it up as I go, but I’ve built my career out of breaking the rules or questioning, like, “Who said we can’t do that?”

African dance made me understand that hip-hop dance is just a form of that. They brought us here, but they couldn’t get the beat and the dance out of our bodies, so it just keeps reinventing itself. When you are dealing with the history of African dance and how that movement evolves [you] … understand that stomping and stepping and hand-slapping and hand-moving had to come from somewhere. So I take creative license to go, “This feels right. This feels like music that would have been played during slavery.” Then from out of slavery, “What is our movement?” It was really a lot of conversations with the director [Blitz Bazawule] to understand that movement. It’s also finding it in the room with costumes, hair, makeup and being on set. We chose moves that felt right.

When you do a musical like this, I have around 10 or 14 dancers that I can put choreography on. In the script, it reads, “Shug arrives into town, dancers dance.” Then I get my imagination going. I create all these little storefronts and put the dancers in the storefront and give them movement that feels right to the character. A lot of that stuff is using my imagination. Then we’ll shoot it and edit it and deliver it to Blitz so he gets his creative juices going.

No. People understand when they hire me that they’re getting more than just a choreographer. I go so far as to speak with the costume designer to make sure we have the right shoes or aprons or hats or glasses. All those things are important to the dance, too.

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Source: Los Angeles Times