Barry Lather was nervous. It was the spring of 1989, and the 22-year-old dancer and choreographer was holed up in a rehearsal studio in North Hollywood waiting to reveal his vision for his newest client. Lather had been tapped to choreograph the video for “Batdance,” the single from Prince’s soundtrack for the upcomingBatman movie. The stakes were high for everyone involved in the song, video, and album. For Lather, an up-and-comer who had made his name working with Janet Jackson, it was a chance to pad his resume. For Prince, who hadn’t had a number-one song since “Kiss” three years earlier, it offered potential rebirth. And for Warner Bros., Prince’s label at the time and the distributor of theBatman film and soundtrack, it was a bold leveraging of two American heroes—synergy in a purple cape. But was the world ready for this dynamic duo? 

Prince was. He had always loved the Dark Knight. At age 7, he sat down at the piano and taught himself the theme to theBatmanTV series from the 1960s. Years later, when Warner Bros. asked him to write two new tracks for Tim Burton’s caped crusader flick, he returned with nine, including “Batdance,” a rock, funk, and hip-hop workout seasoned with snippets of dialogue from the movie. “Oh, I got a live one here!” cackles Jack Nicholson’s Joker in the song’s opening seconds, followed by the most intense vibraphone melody ever recorded (“Batdance” doubles as an argument for the vibes as underrated party starter).     

For the video, Prince and his manager, Albert Magnoli, envisioned a dance battle between gangs of Batmen and Jokers in a bat cave-like setting. During the song’s hip-hop breakdown, a crew of Vicki Vales would deflate the masculine bluster, catwalking through the scrum in tight black miniskirts. Prince, meanwhile, would play a Batman-Joker hybrid—fitting given the yin-yang nature of his music.

It was up to Lather to make it all flow. When Prince finally arrived at that studio in North Hollywood, Lather and the background dancers showed him some preliminary choreography. Prince deadpanned, which caused Lather to overcompensate with new ideas. Still no response from the boss. Finally, he asked Prince straight up what he thought. “I don’t know, cuz—it’s up to you,” said the musician with a sly smile. The earnest young dancer realized he was being clowned, but he also took it as a sign that he was on the right track.

*****

When Barry Lather moved to L.A. out of high school in 1985, dancers of all races and backgrounds praised his style. “You’re funky,” they said, “where you from?” Which was code for, “How can you be white and move likethat?” Lather grew up in Atlanta, the product of a kind of modern Von Trapp family that danced instead of sang. He and his four siblings had no choice. Their mom taught jazz, tap, and ballet, and dad ran a shop that sold leotards and toe shoes.

Lather started lessons at age 5. When rap music blew up in the early ’80s, he turned to street dance. Hip-hop movies likeBreakin’andBeat Street taught him to pop and lock. He entered dance battles at teenage nightclubs around Atlanta. “Back then it was like, ‘You’re either a jazz dancer or a street dancer.’ But I was kind of both,” recalls Lather, who today lives in Stillwater with his wife Cari and their two daughters (Cari, a Circle Pines native, was part of the “fly girls” dance troupe on the ’90s Fox sketch showIn Living Color).

On the strength of his versatility, Lather won a scholarship to the highly regarded Joe Tremaine's Dance Center in L.A., where he honed his craft and tried out for films, music videos, and TV ads. It was a good time for commercial dance. MTV’s video visionaries had saved it from the depths of disco hell. Hip-hop, too, had created a new vocabulary of movement. The steps were fresh. The work was there if you wanted it.

“I got a dance agent and started going to auditions,” says Lather. “My first big job was Michael Jackson’sCaptain E.O.—the film they showed in Epcot at Disney World.” Fourteen-hundred dancers tried out for the job. Forty were hired, including Lather. That gig led to choreography jobs with Janet Jackson, who was impressed by Lather’s freestyle dancing (“You’re funky...” she told him). In 1986, Lather dreamed up the moves for Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” video and promptly won an MTV Video Award at the age of 20.

But he was humble about his fast success. “You’re only as good as your last job,” Lather says. Which is why he nearly fell off his chair when he got a call from Prince’s people two years later.

At his first meeting with Prince and Magnoli, Lather was star-struck. “It’s frickin’ Prince!” he says. “I was a huge fan.Purple Raindropped when I was a senior in high school. I had been to a bunch of his shows.” Prince didn’t say much. “He seemed to be sizing me up,” says Lather. “He just kept using the word ‘theatrical’ to describe the video.” Magnoli eventually explained the dance-off concept, which gave Lather something to grab onto. He focused on the supporting cast first. Then, after getting Prince’s blessing (“It’s up to you, cuz”), he turned to the man himself.

“When you work with legendary stars—no matter how good they are—you have private rehearsals first so they’re not in front of everyone else looking weird,” says Lather. “I had some one-on-ones with him. Those were funny because instead of showing up in that crazy Prince attire, he wore basketball shorts and T-shirts. He looked like a regular pedestrian, just a dude in high-tops.”

Prince was a quick study, and even accepted Lather’s critiques. “When we started shooting, there were times when I said, ‘We can do better.’ He trusted my eye.” During a break one day, Prince invited Lather to hang with him in his BMW. He popped in a CD of darkly beautiful orchestral music—Danny Elfman’s score for theBatman film. “This movie’s gonna be crazy,” said Prince, clearly excited for all aspects of the film. As the two of them sat there listening, Lather noticed that the dashboard was covered in flower petals.

*****

“Batdance” might be Prince’s most disposable number-one hit, but in 1989 it was everything: the chart-topper Warner Bros. had hoped for and the rocket boost Prince needed, a viral novelty that trickled all the way down to your friendly local piano teacher (it had a good run as the recital song of choice for hip tweens everywhere). The video, meanwhile, proved to be an important springboard for Lather, who would go on to direct tours for Usher, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, and, most recently, Carrie Underwood.   

For those who remember Prince’s bat phase, rewatching the video is a mixed bag. The song itself lacks the timeless voodoo of his other hits. It feels like the late-’80s, when genre experiments got ugly (remember Poison’s neo-country ballad “Every Rose Has its Thorn”?). But “Batdance” is hardly a disaster, especially when paired with the video’s funhouse visuals. Lather’s choreography is wild and campy—Broadway meets the street. The Batmen flap their capes and strut like fools. The Jokers have jazz hands. Prince, for his part, slays. He does most of his dancing near the beginning of the song, thrusting those little hips, moving his feet in a blizzard of intricate shuffles. And how great is the hip-hop bridge with the Kim Bassinger stand-ins radiating powerful sexuality? One of them sports a shirt that says, “All this and brains, too,” which rings tone-deaf now but was surely Prince’s idea of a feminist statement back then.

“Batdance” lives on as a nostalgic bauble, but for Lather, it represents something deeper: “Prince had a huge impact on my career,” he says. “He helped me get going in the business.” And unlike the rest of us, Lather got to see Prince as both Bruce Wayne and Batman—the complicated human and the world-conquering superhero. 

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