Games - Paula Abdul

Home > Listing Index > Games > Paula Abdul

	Games - Paula Abdul

Paula Julie Abdul (born June 19, 1962) is an American dancer, choreographer, singer, and television personality.

In the 1980s her career rose rapidly, from being a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers to being a sought-after choreographer at the height of the music video era, then to being a pop music singer with a string of top hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After that she suffered a series of reverses in her professional and personal life, until she found renewed fame and success in the 2000s as a sympathetic judge on the highly rated television series American Idol
.

Early life

Abdul was born in San Fernando, California. Her mother, Lorraine Rykiss, is a Jewish Canadian former concert pianist, and was born in Saint Boniface, a French-speaking area of Winnipeg; she once worked as an assistant to film director Billy Wilder. Her father, Harry Abdul, is a Syrian-Brazilian orphan who was born to parents of Sephardic Jewish descent; he was once a livestock trader and now owns a sand and gravel business in California. When Abdul was 7, her parents divorced. She and her sister, Wendy (seven years older), lived with their mother in the San Fernando Valley.

As a small child Abdul's interest in a career as a performer was inspired by Gene Kelly in the classic film Singin' in the Rain as well as such entertainers as Debbie Allen, Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr., Fred Astaire, and Bob Fosse. In an interview in the May 1990 Ebony magazine, she says, when asked about black influence, "Absolutely....As a young kid growing up, I admired the talent of so many . Black kids identified with me because we all danced together, and we shared that love for art. My favorite artists were Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, the O'Jays—that's what I grew up on. That was my consciousness."

Abdul began dance lessons around the age of eight and showed a natural talent for it. She attended Van Nuys High School where she was on the cheerleading squad, played flute in the band, and was an honor student. At 15 she received a scholarship to a dance camp near Palm Springs, where she learned that her long-legged teachers stayed lithe by binging and purging their food, a practice that Abdul, who was extremely self-conscious about her weight, had been taught by her much taller fellow ballerinas, and which she herself began one night when she was 16 after eating out with her fellow cheerleaders.

Abdul enrolled at California State University at Northridge to study broadcasting. In her freshman year, she tried out for the Los Angeles Lakers' famed Laker Girls squad, and was selected from a pool of 700. Within three weeks she was made head choreographer. She quit school six months later.

Dancing and Choreography

Abdul’s high-energy, street-funk style delighted fans, including the famed Jackson family, who saw her at a game and hired the 20-year old to choreograph a music video for their 1984 Victory album.

Abdul went on to serve as the choreographer for the 1980s videos of singer Janet Jackson. She also choreographed music videos for Duran Duran, Prince, The Jacksons, Jermaine Jackson, Kool & the Gang, the Pointer Sisters, Steve Winwood, Luther Vandross, INXS, Debbie Gibson, ZZ Top, George Michael and Dolly Parton. She choreographed and appeared in Toto's 1986 music video for "Till The End", Michael Jackson's music video "Liberian Girl", and Janet Jackson's music videos "What Have You Done For Me Lately" and "Nasty".

Abdul also choreographed the stage shows for Suzanne Somers and Toni Basil.

In film, Abdul choreographed the dance sequences in the films Coming to America and American Beauty, as well as Cuba Gooding Jr.'s touchdown celebration in Jerry Maguire, and the giant keyboard sequence involving Tom Hanks’ character in Big.

Abdul won the 1989 Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for her work on The Tracey Ullman Show and the same award in 1990 for The 17th Annual American Music Awards.

In a 1990 commercial for Diet Coke, Abdul danced, via editing with footage from the classic film Anchors Aweigh, with childhood inspiration Gene Kelly.

In December 2005, Abdul launched a cheerleading/fitness/dance/dance DVD series called Cardio Cheer, which is marketed to children and teenage girls involved with cheerleading and dance.

Singing

In 1987 Abdul used $35,000 in savings to make a demo of herself singing. Although her voice was relatively untrained, her exceptional dancing proved marketable to the visually oriented, MTV-driven pop music industry.

In 1988, Abdul released her debut album Forever Your Girl. The album eventually became multi-platinum in the spring and summer of 1989 and it spawned five American Top Five singles: "Straight Up", "Forever Your Girl", "Cold Hearted", "(It's Just) The Way That You Love Me", and "Opposites Attract". A remix album, Shut Up and Dance, was also released and reached #7 on Billboard's album chart. The video for "Opposites Attract" featured an animated cat named MC Skat Kat. As a sign of Paula's enormous popularity, the cartoon cat ended up with his own record deal later that year. Abdul's voice was sampled on one track and she appeared in the video for the first single.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Paula Abdul ]

Games - Paula Abdul

Early life

Dancing and Choreography

Singing

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay