Britney Spears Has Always Fought Back. By Dancing.

Before, during and now after the conservatorship that oversaw her life for 13 years, the pop star has used dance to assert her power and connect with her audience.

With her expansive arm gestures, rapid-fire turns and abdominal dexterity, Spears has always used dance to communicate her strength. Brian Friedman, the choreographer responsible for some of Spears’s most famous routines, noted that there was a visible change in her approach to dancing after the conservatorship was put in place in 2008.

“I feel like that was her way of being able to be in control of something, because she didn’t have control over so much,” Friedman said in a phone interview. “So by being able to step into the studio and say ‘I don’t want to do this, I want to do this, I’m going to make up my own thing,’ it gave her some kind of power.”

-from the NY Times, by Madison Mainwaring