Things weren’t going well for young Stefani Germanotta, an 18-year-old from the Upper West Side, at the Bitter End. It was Friday night at the famed Greenwich Village club and the chattering NYU kids in the audience — there because the place didn’t card — outnumbered the handful of misfit East Village friends who had come to see her play. “See the lonely girl,” she sang in her agile and slightly husky voice, letting her fingers fly up and down the keyboard of the beat-up house piano like the child prodigy she once was, “out on the weekend, trying to make it pay.” Set up on the piano’s soundboard, Germanotta’s own portable disco ball spun tiny shards of light and her laptop spat out beats, but no one was listening.

There are many things Laurie Ann Gibson is great at. She’s a world renown choreographer and dancer who has worked with artists like Beyonce, Lady GaGa, Brandy, Jordin Sparks, and Michael Jackson. She’s already jumped into movies, choreographing Paramount Pictures’ Alfie and Universal’s Jessica Alba dance flick Honey, which she also has a starring role in. She’s responsible for creating the eye-popping stage shows for Danity Kane and Day26, and showing competitors how it’s done on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance.

Biting her tongue, however, is not really her strong suit.

Laurie Ann is known for being an intense force. She’ll waste no time telling you you’re wasting her time or you have to toughen up if you plan to get into the music business — and she won’t use those sweet words. That fiery passion was widely displayed when she joined Diddy on his hit MTV reality show Making the Band. While some are afraid, it’s that fierce intensity that makes Laurie Ann a sweeping success, and by extension, anyone she lends her wisdom to.