Rolling with Madonna in ”Sorry”

Fred Tallaksen, the now world-known choreographer from West Scranton, taught Madonna to roller skate spending three weeks in London last month working with the superstar for her video, “Sorry“.

Fred, 42, also appears in “Sorry”, which was released this week: he’s the skater in the red shirt with “Sparks” on the front who pulls Madonna through his legs.

Madonna’s “everything you’d expect a superstar to be,” Fred said. “She’s very nice. She works very, very hard.” He said the 47-year-old diva is in “unbelieveable shape”.

Fred also says he has his Scranton dance teacher, Gail Ercoli, to thank for it all. It all goes back to his going after and getting a role in “Starlight Express” back in the 1990s.

“Everyone said don’t do it, you don’t need to learn to skate,” Fred said, adding that Gail was the exception. A choreographer with roller-skating skills is a hot commodity, it seems. For instance, when Madonna decided she wanted to add roller disco to her video, Fred says, “They found me.”

Skating with Madonna was, he said, “an amazing experience” that became even more amazing on the day of the shoot. “I was not supposed to be in the video. I was the choreographer. But Madonna decided she wanted to use a move she and I had practiced but she really hadn’t tried with anyone else,” Fred said. “They grabbed me and put me in a costume so fast and I was in the video.”

Fred, who now knows Madonna “and all her people,” has been tapped to be in a number on her summer tour, which is “incredibly exciting“.

This month, Fred’s in Los Angeles, where he’s choreographing “a big episode for “Malcolm in the Middle” and working with Ann-Margret,” who is preparing for some shows. The son of Fred and Catherine Tallaksen and brother of Mary and Cathy says his favorite memory of London came “at the very end, when it was all over, Madonna hugged and kissed me. It was really, really special.”

From an article by Terry Bonifanti, The Times-Tribune.