around the Unexpected album from Beyoncé’s Destiny’s Child bandmate Michelle Williams. Knight landed the “Single Ladies” gig after auditioning for choreographer Frank Gatson Jr. “So I imagined I would have the same kind of route,” he says. His sights were set on moving up to the next level of creative direction, inspired by reading interviews and hearing stories from the choreographers he looked up to.

So when he moved to Los Angeles, even though he was only a teenager, he had already been working as a full-time dancer and choreographer in Atlanta. “This was a skill that I was able to kind of nurture over the years,” he says. He says he “started off creating” and has always been able to “come up with steps,” spanning back to his childhood dancing in his grandmother’s living room and putting on talent shows with his cousins. Spotlight: How Singer-Songwriter Kari Kimmel Landed Hundreds of TV & Film Syncs on Her Own Termsįor Knight, atypically, there was no transition from dancer to choreographer. That turned out to be an understatement, and soon after, Knight quit the marching band and joined a dance troupe, then started his own dance troupe and began performing all over the city at talent shows, celebrity basketball games, in local music videos and so on with one opportunity leading to another. One day a friend invited him along to a hip-hop dance class, thinking he might enjoy it, featuring top choreographers of the time Shane Sparks, Dave Scott and Brian Friedman. “The marching band became a place of me first being able to teach people dances, a large group of folks how to be organized and synchronized,” Knight says. Knight grew up in Atlanta and was introduced to dance after playing saxophone in his high school marching band, which is where he says he got his discipline - sitting in the sun for long hours, marching up and down the football field and the looming punishment of 50 pushups if he ever forgot his part. We worked really hard on that video and only hope that people were able to take things away from it that will last a generation or hopefully a lifetime.”

“People were talking about the video from all angles: from learning the dance to ‘Was it a drag queen in the video?’ to ‘Is this really a one-take?’ to ‘Wow, she’s really dancing the whole time,’ you know? So it was super interesting that the focus on it was living up to all the hype.

That’s a cool honor - Kanye got up to speak out for your video,” Knight says with a chuckle. “I was absolutely flattered by the intent of Kanye.

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