LOS ANGELES, Calif. – A dancer and choreographer who worked with Michael Jackson testified Wednesday that she told the director of the pop star’s ill-fated concert tour that she was worried about the singer’s health, but her plea went unanswered.

Alif Sankey told a jury deciding a lawsuit that Jackson appeared thin and unprepared in 2009 for the rigours of his planned comeback concerts, “This Is It.”

The singer missed rehearsals and appeared much thinner than earlier in his career, Sankey testified.

Sankey showed jurors an email she wrote to tour director Kenny Ortega in early June 2009, urging him to try to improve Jackson’s health and spirits. She said she never got a reply.

Sankey was testifying at the trial of a negligent hiring lawsuit filed by Jackson’s mother against concert promoter AEG Live LLC. Katherine Jackson claims AEG failed to properly investigate the doctor who was caring for her son and later administered a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol to the singer, who had trouble sleeping, in June 2009.

The promoter has denied wrongdoing, and its attorneys have said the singer hid his addiction to propofol. Jackson’s former physician, Conrad Murray, was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter.

“When I hugged him, he just felt like marble,” Sankey said about Jackson early in his career. “But when I hugged, when I saw him briefly in 2006, he didn’t feel like that anymore. He felt thin. He just felt thin.”

He was thin during the “This Is It” preparations, she said, and she became concerned when he missed multiple rehearsals.