The MadonnaTribe team has had the chance to sit down for a chat with multifaceted artist Carlton Wilborn.
Carlton, who worked with Madonna in many legendary projects such as the Blond Ambition Tour, The Girlie Show and the Vogue music video not only shares with our readers an in depth look at the creation of those works but also takes us into his private world and his fondest Madonna memories.

She got the people she was sort of interested in and that she wanted to call back. I went home and about three hours later, the lady friend I was living with came to me saying there was a message for me on my voicemail and she had sort of curious and excited tone. But she didn't tell me what it was all about.
So I checked my messages and it was Madonna calling: "Hi Carlton it's Madonna, we are going out to a club tonight and I would like you to be there".
And I was like "Oh my God that was Madonna on the phone".
So of course I called back and I said yes and I had to meet her at a club called Club Louie.

We got there and it was like a bar, a small dance club, kind of dark and underground.
I remember a couple of the other dancers were there and we litterally partied together and danced the whole night. At the end of that night she told us she was taking a hip-hop class the following morning and she said she wanted us to meet her at the class. We said ok.

That club night was Friday and then on Saturday we got up and we all went to the class. We showed up at 10 o'clock and she was taking this class like everybody else. And it was taught by Oscar who ended up doing the Blond Ambition Tour. He got blond hair. At the time I had some really wild and long dreadlocks, so after the class she came to me and told me in this typical sharp tone way: "So do you want to go on the road with me? Then you have to cut your hair!"
She then said: "I really want you to come" and then I cut my hair, it's only hair after all. And that it all happened.

MT: Were you already a fan of sort before working with her?

CW: I was never a big Madonna fan. I wasn't really into the music she was doing.
The thing for me was, when I was in Chicago before going to L.A., I remember a newspaper article about her Who's That Girl Tour in Chicago and it made me think about a dancer and choreographer named Lavelle, who was also from Chicago and that at the time was on tour with Michael Jackson.

Lavelle at the time was "the guy from Chicago who made it big", dancing with Michael etc.
Looking at that Madonna article I was thinking "God, I would love to be able to have that kind of work scenario with somebody like this", looking at the article about her. So that's really where it all came from.

So when I heard Madonna was having auditions in L.A. for a tour I just remembered looking at that article and thinking again about Lavelle and Michael so I said maybe I can go and build that kind of scenario for myself.
And that's the reason I ended up going to the audition.
It really wasn't about being a fan. I wasn't following her that much. All I knew was she was a megastar like Jackson and I wanted to be what Lavelle was.

MT: And I guessed it worked...

CW: Yes it worked (laughs). I remember when I showed up at the audition Niki was there with her, Niki always stood on the auditions.

I wasn't really that intimidated. I had already worked on big things and I had the "Whitney thing", so for me it was absolutely great to meet her but I wasn't like "Oh my God that's Madonna!"

MT: Once all the dancer for the tour were chosen, they were then introduced to the public with the Vogue video directed by David Fincher. What do you remember about that shooting? It wasn't your first time on a film set.

CW: No it wasn't my first time on a film set, but it was the first time on a video I knew it was going to be that big. We knew David Fincher was at the time a really big music video director, so that was a big deal and it was a video for Madonna so it was going to be everywhere.

We knew from the way it was designed that we were going to be featured in the video and not being just as extras. It was amazing.

Oh and by the way that same day we also shot, as the cast of Blond Ambition, a Nike commercial that Madonna was going to do and that never aired.
It all happened during the first weeks of tour rehearsals.

MT: Can you tell us a bit more about this Nike commercial? There have been reports and rumours about it for a long time...

CW: Well we shot it and I remember we were all dressed in different Nike clothes and Madonna decided who was going to wear what, and which dancers were going to be used for separate shots and I remember the moment when they wanted me to finish a workout of dance and then I had to flop down a sofa.
I don't remember exactly why it never aired.

MT: How long did you rehearse before the tour?

CW: Both of the Madonna tours I did had like a nine week rehearsal process. We did six weeks in a regular dance studio and the last three weeks on a movie sound stage where the actual stage was constructed.
It was a really gruelling process, especially by the time we got to the stage.
They were incredibly long days. We would start reheharsal in the studio, going over numbers from ten o'clock in the morning to three pm. At three pm we would do a run through of the show 'til five pm, with full make-up and full costumes because Madonna was testing make-up for lighting and all those kind of things.
And for me that was the very first time.
I never had done a technical rehearsal with make-up, where they test your position with the light. So that to me was like "wow she is really taking her job seriously". It was really, really cool.

We would then finish that run through at five o'clock, taking a dinner break 'til seven pm and then we would come back at seven, and do another full dress and make-up run through of the show from eight pm till ten pm.
It was really like being in a boot camp training where your body is really in shape and amazing. The amount of stamina, the amount of energy and strenght that you had to have to do two full run through show was equivalent to the energy that it took to do one stadium show in front of eighty thousand people. That much energy.
It was amazing.
And by the time we actually got on the road, that was like a piece of cake.

MT: And then the tour started in Japan.
Was that the first time you travelled around the world like that?

CW: No, because of the dancing company I had been with, I had travelled to Europe, France. But it was the first time I travelled with a private jet (laughs).

MT: The Blond Ambition was captured on laser disc twice. In Yokohama at the beginning of the tour and in Nice, France, at the end of the tour. By watching those two performace you really get an idea of how the show had evolved over the months. Madonna herself looks less daring in the Japanese show...

CW: Well, it's like any other show that you do.
When you do something that has that sort of repetitiveness to it you definitely grow into it. It allows you to be more fearless. You know that you can take certain risks in certain moments once you establish where your comfortable spots are.
You know where your heavy breathing spots are.
You get to know the spots where you can say: "this is very light I can really play here".

It gives you that kind of liberty. Where in the beginning of the show you just really monitor every little section accurately. It just sort of builds you into more freedom.

MT: In Blond Ambition you had a solo with Madonna during Oh Father, in one of the most controversial moments of the show, which was described by Madonna herself as a theatrical presentation of her music.
What do you remember of putting that particular routine together and what did the character of the priest actually represent in that scene?

CW: I remember that Vince Paterson designed that number. I think what Madonna was trying to say with that number is that a priest, ideally, is a person with whom you end up having an intimate relation. You go and share your feelings and in-depth information with him during confession Although there is this wall between you, they are experiencing you on a really intimate soul level and I think this was sort of breaking the wall of confession and allowing her to speak directly to the priest about her relationship with her father.

So even if it seemed the priest was phisically involved with her, there was nothing sexual to it. It was designed so that the priest was sort of giving strenght to her which is why there's a moment in which I'm folding her up and turning her around but at the same time she was someone resistent to what the priest was offering her because of this sort of dogma that ruins the relationship, which is why at the very end of the number she walks away from me looking back.
So it also represents a competition of wills.

MT: While speaking of Blond Ambition, do you have a favourite number in the show?

CW: I think that the Vogue number in the Blond Ambition Tour was pretty cool and... Express Yourself. It's either Express Yourself or Vogue. Either one of those.
Express Yourself was just incredible because it was the number that opened the show.

The guys where all on stage. The music starts, you sort of hear the wheels turning. Madonna coming on stage for the first time and people screaming and you could not hear the music over them screaming.
And again what was brilliant about what Madonna created then that has not really shown up in a lot of other tours is that she spent time really featuring the dancers.
The dancers were really technical and were put out there in front. It was the first time the dancers were really used with that power.

MT: And then came the Truth Or Dare documentary. How was it like being on tour with a film crew filming everything all the time?

CW: You know... for me it was fun. I didn't have any issues with them, I found it sort of interesting and challenging of course. I was sure enough with myself at the time. All I knew was "fine, cameras are going to be on so what are going to do in front of the cameras?". That's where I was.
It was just cool to know that I was going to have something that was going to be covering every moment of me and people were going to get to see it. I wasn't at all intimidated about how it was going to represent me because it can't represent me in any different way than I choose to represent myself.
So fine, bring the cameras around as long as I behaved the right way it was fine if the cameras were around.

MT: Do you remember any funny or memorable episodes happened on the road that were then cut from the final movie?

CW: There was a lot of interview footage. There were individual interviews for each of us. It was something very revealing that got cut down. The only surviving bit in the movie is some footage of Oliver talking about his dad but they spent a lot of time coming to my room, and we talked about very emotional things that were never shown that I wish they had.

MT: And there is also you Mom in the movie...

CW: Yes, isn't that great?

MT: Is that your favourite scene of the movie then?

CW: Yes that's a very special moment. I love my Mom. She is no longer among us. She was a performer and she was known around Chicago and she was sort of living vicariously through me.
She was having a lot of health issues at the time and it was great to have her be in a film, which was the biggest element that I knew she would have wanted her career to be about.

You know Madonna was really a Lady to me. At least how she dealt with me, I don't know how any of the other dancers felt about her. Inside of her rigid perfectionist, artistic brain there was a real elengance about her. The way that she lived her private life... that's one of the things I was surprised by.
I would have thought that she would have had a much more avant guard private life and she really didn't at all. She was very classy in her private life.

And I wanted to make sure that I'd say something that was really true about her I didn't just want to say "Oh I'm going to miss you".
I wanted to make sure that people got a sense of a richer part of who she was.

MT: That is awesome Carlton.

In the history of Madonna live tours it is very rare that a dancer is hired for more than a tour. You are one of the few exceptions. After Blond Ambition you worked with Madonna again in The Girlie Show. Can you tell us about how did that happen? Did you have to audition again?

CW: Basically it sort of came backwards.
It's very interesting. I was here in L.A. and Niki Haris and I always remained friends so I knew they were thinking about going back out on tour. I knew because Niki told me she was already in talks with Madonna.
Then I got a phone call from Madonna at home: "Hi what's going on? I'm in New York, I'm getting ready to go back out and I'm holding auditions in N.Y. and I'm not finding who I want".
This was litterally the beginning of the conversations (laughs) and then she asked me if I knew some good dancers in L.A.

I was really honoured that she considered my ideas and I said "Yes there are couple of people I know".
Then she said: "Listen, when I get out there would you mind helping me run the audition?". I said: "Awesome, I'd love to do that".

There were people that I knew that I really wanted to get in there for her to see right away. So that was the first conversation on the phone.

She called back like a hour and a half later and she said: "Oh my God I forgot to ask you, are you interested in going back out on tour with me?"
And I said: "Yeah of course I love working with you and we always had a good relationship" so I said "I'd love to".
So we ran the audition and at the end of it my position was given. So at the end of the second call back she told me to come back so she could compare people next to me.

MT: From a professional point of view which are the main differences between Blond Ambition and The Girlie Show?

CW: Well definitely for me the Girlie Show was the best one. I like that show a lot more. It was a much more mature show. A lot more sophisticated.
I wasn't really that into the campiness that was going on in the Blond Ambition, guys as mermaids and all that kind of stuff.
It was fun but she knew me enough to never even think to cast me in one of those numbers. So I definitely like the Girlie Show more. It just seemed much more romantic and much more elegant as a show, much more adult.

MT: We had the chance to speak to Alex Magno about the Girlie Show and he told us that The Beast Within from that show is the number he is most proud of.
What do you think about yourself being heavily featured in that number...

CW: Hey... That's MY number.

MT: Yes absolutely. What is actually the story behind it, which seems a bit criptic. It looks like a depiction of all the evil that there is in the world, war, hate, slavery, jealousy, envy, etc.
So did you have the chance to discuss the meaning of it while you were preparing it?

CW: Sure. I don't remember the title of the song that preceeds it, the one in which she's talking about her friend who died of aids...

MT: In This Life.

CW: Yes, In this Life, exactly, that's the number that preceeds it, and so I think The Beast Within was representing the toxic energy that can take away a man's life, that can take you out, that can kill you and it sort of came from there. It was really about this beast that lives within us.

It was an amazing journey, I was really clear at the very the beginning that it was the number that was going to feature me. But it wasn't really until the number was done that I realized that Madonna was not even intended to be on stage at all.
I though it was going to be a number that was going to be featuring me and maybe she'd be standing up on a big platform or somewhere else on stage, singing as we danced the song. But in the end it was built as a full number for me.

And the other thing that was so great about it was the guy I ended up doing the number with, Chris Childers, was one of the people I suggested to Madonna when she asked me if I knew good dancers.

He was one of the first people that I mentioned, because Chris and I had done all these jobs together.
We got cast together for a lot of jobs. When I realized that we could have a whole dance scene for he and I it was just so perfect. We dance alike, we trust each other so it was just awesome.
But it was a very hard choreography to do.
It was absolutely gruelling. Lifting him up and having him standing on my back. It was a non stop eight minute number. I remember having to do that number four times in a row to put the right lighting and find the right camera angles. And even though it was rally hard I know that when madonna was saying: Do it again, run it again" she was making it perfect for me.

MT: Then can we safely say that was your favourite number in the Girlie Show or maybe there's another one you love a lot?

CW: Yes that was a great number for me.
There was another great one, Justify My Love. It starts out really slow and women have big gowns. It was really great. There was something great about the costumes. They originally came from major movies and major shows that have been done, that Madonna rented for the tour.

MT: Wow great.
Well, speaking about costumes you had the chance to work in the two Madonna tours that had major costume designers, Jean Paul Gaultier and Dolce & Gabbana...

CW: Yes that was great. To look back at my career and thinking about the great people I had the chance to meet during that period.
Herb Ritts for example, he did some photos that were used in the Truth Or Dare movie. I had really an opportunity to work with some landmarks.

MT: You have been involved in different presentations of one particular song: Vogue.
You were in the original video, the MTV Awards version, the Blond Ambition and Girlie Show numbers. What do you think about vogueing?

CW: Well as much as I know about it, and I don't really know much about it, I think can be seen as a sort of "liberation" for many young gay people. It can be liberating as it can let people be what they are.
And I go for anything that allows people to honour the truth of who they are. And that's what vogueing is about.

MT: So what's your favourite performance of Vogue?

CW: The MTV one. That was absolutely my favourite without question. Again, that level of production had never been done on MTV. The costumes, the fans, drama.
MTV had just no idea, we just came out and rocked.
Usually the numbers that allow me to integrate acting are the ones that work for me. The ones in which you have to get into a character.

MT: People had the chance to see the Blond Ambition backstage in Truth Or Dare. But we don't know much about how was travelling during the Girlie Show. Do you have a fondest memory of that?

CW: It was very different for me, one because the entire experience of traveling around the world like that was now a familiar thing to me. The first time it was all new. I had never been on a private jet, never travelled with the paparazzi after me. The second time I knew how to handle all that. It was all much more comfortable and I felt more in my skin.

It was also a completely different dynamic because we had four female dancers in the ensamble and the men that were in the Girlie Show were more the guy type. So the Girlie Show for me overall was much more enjoyable.
And there was a maturity in the performers. By the time Madonna put together the Girlie Show a lot of those dancers had already been working a lot. Luca, Chris and Carrie Ann had already been doing a lot of stuff. You can trust those performers on stage and you know if something goes a little weird you know you don't have to get nervous with people like that around.

MT: How did the Madonna public change from Blond Ambition to the Girlie Show?

CW: I do remember the audience for the Girlie Show being a bit older. By the time we did the Girlie Show Madonna had a lot of different kind of projects to her career that brought a different level audience. It was more an introspective audience, more psychologically evolved.

MT: And what have you been up two between the two Madonna tour?

CW: Well I worked with Janet Jackson, I did two videos with her, one of them was Love Will Never Do Without You directed by Herb Ritts. And basically the Blond Ambition Tour and Truth or Dare opened a lot of other doors for me.
My acting career started and I landed my first guest role in L.A. Law. I remember when we finished the Blond Ambition Tour Madonna and I used to have really nice cool conversations. I remember we were on the plane, coming back and she said to me: "You should pursue acting."
That was a specific conversation that she and I had and that's what I went after which is also what I always wanted to do. When I was in Chicago in the dance company I was taking acting classes. I was much more interested in being an actor. My caerer has been really interesting. I feel like the evolvement of my dance career really just sort of happened. I feel I had more interest in having an acting career but my dancing career happened first.

MT: You are also working on a book. On your website you say it is the most important thing you will be doing in your career.

CW: Well, the most corageous...

MT: What is the book about? Is it about you?

CW: It is definitely about me, it is really the journey of me coming from behind the scenes.
Although I've had nice acting roles I have not yet been in the position to be in the forefront for a project completely, to lead the show. In a way it is also a spiritual book. It's a combination of prose and poetry. It's basically divided into five different sections.
In each section there's a theme and at the end of the prose the theme is supported by poetry.
Each section ends with questions that the reader has to answer. Questions that address the theme in relation to their own life.
It's that sort of spiritual book that will hopefully help other people investigate themselves.

CW: My fondest memory of Madonna has nothing to do with tours. My fondest memory of Madonna happened in 1995 when I was having a really hard time in my career, Madonna became aware of that and she allowed me to live for a few months in the castle that she had in Hollywood.
I stayed there three months, she was out of town for the majority of that time.
I will always be in debit to Madonna no matter what.
It was a real hard time for me and she reached out in a way she really didn't have to. She could have helped me in other ways but the fact that she truly, truly, let me know that she trusted me in her personal space at that degree really meant a lot to me.

MT: That's awesome.

CW: Yes

MT: Carlton, thanks a lot for this conversation and for sharing a part of your life with us.

CW: Thanks a lot to you.