Wade Robson Biography | Wade Robson
Wade Robson(full name: Wade Jeremy William Robson) is an Australian dancer and choreographer. He began performing as a dancer at the age of five. He has directed music videos and world tours for pop artists such as NSYNC and Britney Spears. Robson was the host and executive producer for The Wade Robson Project which aired on MTV in 2003. In 2007, he joined the Fox television dance series So You Think You Can Dance as a judge and choreographer.
He was friends with the pop singer Michael Jackson as a child. After Jackson was charged with child sexual abuse, Robson testified at Jackson’s trial, saying that Jackson had never abused him. In 2013, he reversed his position, saying Jackson had abused him. His allegations are the subject of the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland.
Wade Robson Age
Wade is 36 years old as of 2018. He was born on 17 September 1982, in Brisbane, Australia
Wade Robson Family
- Koa Robson
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Wade Robson’s Father (Dennis Robson) Died By Suicide After Michael Jackson Helped Move The Family To LA
Wade Robson’s life would never be the same when he left Brisbane, Australia for a showbiz career at the beckoning call of Michael Jackson. Neither apparently would his father’s.
In part 2 of Leaving Neverland’s HBO debut, Wade went into detail about his father, Dennis Robson, taking his own life in 2002 after he found himself alone in Australia while the rest of his family was miles away.
The father became estranged from them a few years into MJ’s friendship with the young child. As explained in the doc, Jackson helped the Robsons uproot their lives from Australia to El Lay in the early 1990s to help launch young Wade’s career in show business.
Related: Shocking Michael Jackson Allegations From ‘Leaving Neverland’
Wade’s mother left Dennis when she moved Wade and his younger sister Chantal to the states. When Dennis, who was bipolar, visited his family, he would start exhibiting strange behavior that only pushed his son further away from him. Wade explained:
“He was doing things like going on walks in the middle of the night through LA. Getting on buses and we would have to find him… I think it terrified me but my reaction was just to get angry, and I just wanted him to go.”
The distance between them caused the family to fall apart, but it wasn’t until Wade’s older brother Shane, who stayed in Australia with his father, decided he wanted to move out to LA with the rest of the family in 2002.
Sadly, Shane was the last member of the family to see their father alive: Dennis hanged himself the day his eldest son left. Shane remembered in the doc:
“At that point, I didn’t know if I’m leaving for good, I’m taking six months off and going to hang out with the family.”
Before he left for his flight, he remembered noticing that something was wrong with his father — he described it as if “the lights were on but no one was home,” recalling:
“The day that I left my grandparents, his mom and dad, came over before I headed to the airport. And I remember dad didn’t say a word anything at all. Kind of like a statue staring off in the distance… And then I remember saying goodbye and giving him a hug and I don’t think he ever hugged me.”
Shane recalled feeling “anger” after learning about his father’s suicide. His mother, Joy, recalled:
“I brought all the children in for the night and we laughed and we cried and we laughed and we cried.”
But after that first night, a then-19-year-old Wade didn’t cry — he went back to work. Wade explained:
“I don’t know, I feel like from the next day I just started stitching myself up again.”
At the time, Robson had his hands full serving as the creative director for Britney Spears and *NSYNC. It was reported that Wade even had a relationship with the songstress before she started dating Justin Timberlake.
“Michael had some kind of obsession with Britney and he would call me and ask me: What is she like? Isn’t she sexy? Isn’t she beautiful? And wondering if I could set up a way for them to meet.”
Wade partially blamed Jackson for his father’s suicide in the 2013 complaint he filed against the superstar, claiming that the thought of Wade being sexually abused was “a huge source of anxiety and depression” for Dennis.
Wade Robson Early career
Robson was in a talent troupe called Johnny Young’s Talent School and the group did 14 shows a week, usually at venues like shopping malls. When he was nine, Robson moved to the United States with his mother and sisters. Michael Jackson assisted them in the move and recruited Robson to appear in three music videos: “Black or White,” “Jam,” and “Heal the World.”
At the age of 11, Robson had an agent. Along with friend DeWayne Turrentine, he formed the hip-hop duo Quo and by the end of the year released an album on Jackson’s MJJ Music label through Epic/SME Records. The following year, he was teaching dance classes in Hollywood. He formed a troupe of dancing children which performed internationally. He received his first choreography job for the R&B group Immature at 14. The job led to others, for artists such as Britney Spears. Clients were sometimes reluctant to take direction from Robson, a self-described “skinny little white kid”. When Spears first interviewed Robson to choreograph her tour, she exclaimed, “He’s a friggin’ baby!”; she had expected him to be in his 30s or 40s.
During the late 1990s, while still a teenager, Robson choreographed Spears’s Pepsi commercials including one which aired during the 2001 Super Bowl. He choreographed the performance by NSYNC and Spears at the 1999 Video Music Awards and he co-directed Spears’s 1999–2000 world tours as well as NSYNC’s 2000 No Strings Attached Tour. In 2001, he choreographed Spears’ I’m a Slave 4 U video and was choreographer and director of NSYNC’s 2001 PopOdyssey Tour. In the NSYNC music video “Pop”, Robson had to fill in for NSYNC member Joey Fatone during several of the dance sequences because of an injury that Fatone sustained at an NSYNC concert the night before the video shoot. That same year, he directed Spears’ Dream Within a Dream Tour.
Wade Robson Professional career
He was the creator and host of MTV’s The Wade Robson Project, a talent search competition for hip-hop dancers. The program was sponsored by Juice Batteries. In 2002, he was named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”.
Dance clothing company Power T Dance developed a line of name-brand consumer dance shoes with Robson. The shoes were distributed in the U.S. through the Ralph Libonati Co.
He appeared as himself in the 2004 urban dance film You Got Served, which won Best Dance Sequence (Feature Film) at the 2004 American Choreography Awards.
He has joined several other choreographers such as Mia Michaels and Shane Sparks on the PULSE Tour, a series of nationwide weekend workshops designed to give dancers the chance to train under top choreographers.
In 2007, he began choreographing the American Idols LIVE! Tour. He also choreographed both group and partner pieces for the second and third seasons of So You Think You Can Dance.
In September 2007, Robson was awarded a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography for the dance number “Ramalama (Bang Bang)” on (Season 2) of So You Think You Can Dance. The choreography continues to be one of the show’s more memorable group performances to date.
He was awarded his second Primetime Emmy Award the following year in 2008 on Season 3 of So You Think You Can Dance for the jazz routine “Humming Bird and the Flower”. The performance was lauded by the show’s executive producer Nigel Lythgoe calling it “absolutely genius, brilliant, and one of those routines that we will remember on this series for a very long time.”
Robson and NSYNC’s Justin Timberlake partnered in 2001, co-writing the hit singles “Pop”, “Gone”, and “See Right Through You” on NSYNC’s final album Celebrity. He initially had written “Celebrity” for his own album but was persuaded to let NSYNC record it instead. They also co-wrote Britney Spears’ “What It’s Like to Be Me”, on which Timberlake sang back up vocals. The song’s copyright is held jointly by Robson’s and Timberlake’s respective companies, WaJeRo Sound and Tennman Tunes.
He choreographed the animated feature film Happy Feet Two, released in 2011. He originally was set to direct Step Up Revolution, (released in 2012), but dropped out of the project for personal reasons. He was replaced by Scott Speer.
Wade Robson Dancing
Wade Robson Michael Jackson
Wade Robson met his idol, Michael Jackson, at just five years old. He had won a 1987 “dance-alike” competition in Brisbane for which the reward was the introduction and tickets to Jackson’s concerts in town. The two bonded, and Jackson told Robson’s family to get in touch if they ever found themselves on his side of the world.
They did exactly that two years later when the family traveled to California after Robson’s dance company booked a gig at Disneyland. They stayed at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, where Robson says he slept in Jackson’s bedroom while his family slept in a guesthouse. In the two-part documentary Leaving Neverland, which airs in Australia on Friday and Saturday nights on Ten, Robson points to this stay as the first time Jackson sexually abused him.
Leaving Neverland features in-depth interviews with Robson and another man, James Safechuck, both of whom tell filmmaker Dan Reed that Jackson groomed and abused them as children. (Jackson’s family has publicly denied the two men’s claims and is suing HBO for $US100 million.) Robson, 36, an Emmy-winning choreographer most known for his work with stars such as Britney Spears and ‘N Sync, discusses the emotional distress that has come with alleged abuse by the man who inspired him to take up dancing in the first place.
“He helped me tremendously. He helped me with my career. He helped me with my creativity, with all of these sorts of things,” Robson says early in the documentary. “And he also sexually abused me. For seven years.”
After dancing onstage with Jackson in 1987, Robson rose to local fame and spent a few years performing at shopping malls with the dance company before moving to California with his mother, Joy, and sister, Chantal. (His older brother and father stayed behind, causing a rift in the family.) Jackson helped with the move, and Robson went on to appear in the music videos for Black or White, Jam and Heal the World.
As a preteen, Robson co-founded the short-lived rap duo Quo and recorded music on Jackson’s MJJ Music label, a subsidiary of Sony. He soon afterward landed his first choreography job with an R&B group called Immature, according to a 2001 Spin article titled Teen Dreams, but he got his big break at 16, thanks to Britney Spears.
“He’s a friggin’ baby!” Spears reportedly said upon meeting Robson in 1999, when she was looking for someone to choreograph her first big US tour. Their professional partnership spanned a few years, as Robson also choreographed her Pepsi commercial that aired during the 2001 Super Bowl, as well as multiple tours and award show performances of hers and ‘N Syncs. Robson later told People magazine that it was his idea for Spears to drape a python over her shoulders while performing I’m a Slave 4 U at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
That summer, the New York Times credited Robson with having “engineered Britney Spears’s conversion to womanhood” and working “the same magic on the too-cute boy band ‘N Sync.” His many teenage fans flocked to online forums, the article noted, with one fan writing that he “might not be as famous as ‘N Sync… but if you gave me a choice between meeting the band or taking another class from their choreographer, Mr. Robson, I would take the class in a heartbeat!” These teenagers presumably made up the audience for the MTV dance competition series The Wade Robson Project, which premiered in 2003.
Jackson figures into most of the articles detailing the peak of the young choreographer’s fame. Joy Robson told the Times that her son began teaching himself the dance moves to Thriller as a 2-year-old. Wade Robson told People magazine that Jackson’s “heart is so genuine. He has no concept of a normal life.” The Spin article mentions that one of Jackson’s security guards testified in court that he had seen Jackson grab a 10-year-old Robson’s crotch, but adds that “Robson and his mother responded by becoming Jackson’s loyal defenders.”
Spin also mentioned that in 1993, “no one was asking Robson about his dance prowess. Instead, the press wanted to know what happens when a ten-year-old kid climbs into bed with the King of Pop,” referring to 13-year-old Jordan Chandler’s allegations of child sex abuse against Jackson, who denied them. (At the time, Spin noted, Robson said on CNN that Jackson had never abused him.) The two parties settled for a reported sum of $US25 million, and the matter stayed out of the courts until 2003, when Jackson was arrested and charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy named Gavin Arvizo. After an 18-month trial, the jury acquitted Jackson.
Robson had joined child star Macaulay Culkin in defending Jackson, testifying that he had slept in Jackson’s Neverland Ranch bedroom several times but had never been touched inappropriately. After the singer’s death in 2009, Robson told the Sydney Morning Herald that Jackson “changed the world and, more personally, my life forever.”
But Robson, who won two outstanding-choreography Emmys for So You Think You Can Dance, began to draw back from his work in 2011. There are conflicting reports as to what his relationship was to the Michael Jackson-themed Cirque du Soleil production that premiered two years later. A recent Forbes article states that Robson approached Jackson’s estate about directing it but did not land the job, which the Jackson estate cites as the reason he came out with allegations against the singer. But Robson told Vanity Fair that he had been hired for three different iterations of the show before dropping out because of multiple nervous breakdowns.
In 2013, the Associated Press reported, Robson filed a lawsuit saying “stress and trauma had forced him to face the truth that he was sexually abused by Jackson.” Safechuck filed a similar suit, and both are now under appeal. The abuse allegations they discuss in Leaving Neverland are devastating and described in great detail. Robson, whom Jackson used to refer to as “Little One”, recalls the singer showing him pornography. He said that Jackson’s fondling him eventually escalated to oral sex and that Jackson justified the alleged abuse by saying they had been “brought together by God.”
If “other survivors of child sexual abuse at the hands of anybody could be helped in any way, shape or form by me coming forward and speaking,” Robson says in the documentary, “I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to speak the truth as loud as I had to speak the lie for so long.”
Wade Robson Project
Wade Robson Britney Spears
Famed dancer and choreographer Wade Robson was thrust into the spotlight this week as he appeared on a documentary entitled Leaving Neverland. The HBO special aired in two parts, Sunday night and Monday night, and allowed Robson, along with a man named James Safechuck, to talk about their experiences with the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Both men claim to have been sexually abused by Jackson when they were kids.
Robson hasn’t been forward-facing much over the years, which is not uncommon for dancers and choreographers; he’s used to working behind-the-scenes with artists and not having his own spotlight. However, back in the 90s and early 00s, just about everyone knew who Robson was.
For starters, he was the man behind some of the most iconic pop-dance routines. He worked with groups like *NSYNC and with artists like Britney Spears. These particular professional relationships transpired into something even bigger.
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were one of the biggest “it” couples of the late ’90s, early 2000s. The two seemed to be a match made in heaven and fans simply couldn’t get enough of them. And, while just about everyone thought that the two would end up getting married, having babies, and living happily ever after together, they went through a breakup that shocked the world.
Although it’s never been confirmed by Spears, Timberlake, or Robson, rumor has it that Robson was the reason for Spears’ and Timberlake’s split. For years, many have believed that Spears cheated on Timberlake with Robson. According to Us Weekly, Spears and Robson dated, albeit briefly, in the early 2000s.
Spears didn’t stay with Robson very long, however, and was on to the next (and the next, and the next) fairly quickly. According to celebrity dating database Who’s Dated Who, Spears and Robson ended things in 2002. Spears was then linked to Eminem, Tom Brady (yes, New England Patriots quarterback and Super Bowl champion), and Fred Durst. She also had brief relationships with Jared Leto, Columbus Short, and Colin Farrell (to name a few) around the same time.
Perhaps this is all the world needed when looking for Britney-Justin relationship closure. Timberlake released the single “Cry Me a River” in 2002. The emotional song is about being cheated on — which fans believe is a clear nod to Spears’ alleged infidelity with Robson. You can watch the music video for “Cry Me a River” above.
Spears had a response to the song, releasing an apology of sorts in 2003. “Every time” may have been Spears’ way of making amends with her ex.
“I may have made it rain. Please forgive me. My weakness caused you pain. And this song’s my sorry,” Spears sings. Robson mentioned Spears in the Leaving Neverland documentary, but he didn’t go into detail about their relationship and he didn’t mention the Justin Timberlake rumors, either.
“Michael had some sort of obsession with Britney and he would call me and he’d wanna know what it was like working with her, what she was like. ‘Isn’t she sexy? Isn’t she beautiful?’ Wondering if I can set up a way for them to meet. And in those conversations as well, Michael was really interested in my sexual life with girls,” Robson said. “Just really weird, considering Michael and I’s whole sexual history,” he added.
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Wade Robson: What to Know About the Man Accusing Michael Jackson of Abuse in Leaving Neverland
Adopted:https://people.com
Published: March 04, 2019
In the new Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson — a celebrity choreographer who has worked with ‘NSYNCthis link opens in a new tab and Britney Spears — alleged the late music icon sexually abused him as a boy.
Throughout the film — which aired its first part on HBO on Sunday and also features the story of a second accuser, James Safechuck — Robson, 36, goes into detail about his relationship with Jackson, whom he claimed molested him over a seven-year period starting in 1990. The Jackson estate has sued HBO and slammed the documentary, calling it “another rehash of dated and discredited allegations.”
In response to the Jackson estate’s lawsuit, HBO said in a statement, “Despite the desperate lengths taken to undermine the film, our plans remain unchanged. HBO will move forward with the airing of Leaving Neverland, the two-part documentary, on March 3 and 4. This will allow everyone the opportunity to assess the film and the claims in it for themselves.”
Robson and Safechuck, 40, have both denied being molested by Jackson in the past. Robson previously appeared as a witness for Jackson’s defense during a sexual abuse trial in 2005 in which the pop star was acquitted of child molestation charges. Though Robson sued this link opens in a new tab Jackson’s estate in 2013 over his alleged abuse, a judge threw the case out of court this link opens in a new tab in May 2015.
So who exactly is the man accusing the late legend of sexual abuse? Here’s everything to know about the choreographer who got his start as Jackson’s young protégé.
Robson was a fan of Jackson since birth. His mother used to play Jackson’s songs nonstop when she was pregnant with him, and by the age of 4, he knew all of the King of Pop’s famous moves. When he was 5, Robson won a national Jackson dance-impersonation contest in his native Australia. The grand prize was a meeting with Jackson, who then invited Robson to perform at his Brisbane concert.
In 1990, Robson appeared on Australia’s Star Search, dancing and lip-synching to Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.” That same year, when Robson was around 8 years old, his family came into contact with Jackson again during a vacation in Los Angeles.
In the documentary, Robson alleged Jackson convinced Robson’s mother to let him stay over alone with the singer while the rest of his family went on a trip to the Grand Canyon; Robson alleged Jackson performed oral sex on him and kissed him while his family was away, claiming Jackson told him, “You and I were brought together by God. We were meant to be together. This is how we show love.”
Robson claimed Jackson told him if anyone “ever found out what we were doing about the sexual stuff, that he and I would be pulled apart and we would never be able to see each other again. And that he and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives.”
Jackson signed Robson to his private label and cast him in several of his music videos, including 1991’s “Black or White.”
Robson created signature moves for the boy band in the late ’90s and early ’00s and was the man behind their dance routines for their No Strings Attached tour in 2000. Despite not having any formal musical training, Robson also co-wrote four songs with ‘NSYNC’s leading man, Justin Timberlake, on the band’s 2001 album Celebrity. Robson worked with Timberlake on his hit single, “Pop this link opens in a new tab,” and even got a chance to fill in for an injured Joey Fatone as his dancing double in the music video.
It has been more than 17 years since Britney Spears strutted on stage to perform “Slave 4 This link opens in a new tab” with an albino python around her neck at the VMAs, but the moment remains iconic. Robson is the one to thank for thinking up the performance that shocked audiences everywhere. Robson began a working relationship Spears when he was just 16 years old after she hired him this link opens in a new tab to choreograph her first big U.S. tour in 1999. After watching a sampling of Robson’s moves, Spears decided to hire the teenager.
But Robson also allegedly made his way into other parts of Spears’ life. Rumor has it he may have been the one responsible for making Timberlake and Spears’ relationship go “Bye, Bye, Bye this link opens in a new tab.” In 2002, Spears allegedly cheated on Timberlake with Robson. At the time, Robson said reports of him being the cause of the breakup stung, but Timberlake’s songs like “Cry Me a River this link opens in a new tab” are said to be written about the duo. (Spears has never confirmed nor denied the rumors.)
Robson once served as the host and executive producer for the eponymously named MTV show, the Wade Robson Project this link opens in a new tab, which aired in 2003. The dance-battle inspired TV show was well-received but didn’t last very long.
For several seasons, Robson appeared as a choreographer, performer and guest judge on So You Think You Can Dance. He won two Emmy awards for Outstanding Choreography for his routines “Ramalama” and “The Hummingbird and the Flower.”
In 2007, Robson choreographed and performed a special performance for Dancing with the Stars.
Robson now lives in Hawaii with his wife, Amanda, and son, Koa, 8. After taking five years off from dancing, Robson returned to teaching in 2017. In a January 2019 interview with DanceTeacher.comthis link opens in a new tab, Robson said Jackson was the reason he had left the entertainment industry years prior.
“My relationship with dance had become tainted,” Robson told the site. “Michael Jackson was the reason I began dancing at the age of 2. He was my main inspiration and my mentor, but he was also my abuser. The dance was so intertwined with him and the abuse that I couldn’t separate them.”
As to why he decided to get back into the dance world, Robson said, “Up until a year and a half ago I didn’t think I ever would. I thought that dance was gone from my life forever. Whenever it would call to me, I’d just say ‘no’ and push those thoughts away. Yoga was now my physical and spiritual movement. Then one morning I awoke with the awareness that before my relationship with dance had become tainted, it was pure, innocent and joyful.”
Robson and his wife established the Robson Family Fund this link opens in a new tab under the Hawaii Community Foundation in 2019. As the fund’s website reads, “Wade Robson, a survivor of child sexual abuse, along with Amanda Robson, his wife, mother of their child and also a survivor of child abuse, wanted to create a powerful way to contribute towards the healing from and prevention of child abuse.”
The fund says it “focuses on grants to nonprofit organizations that support prevention efforts, and aims to identify and fill in gaps in areas of child abuse healing and prevention that are under-researched, under-developed or inactive.”
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