Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Tony Award-nominated choreographer and director whose colorful work includes works for the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater as well as Broadway musicals including “Swing!” and movies including “Footloose,” died on January 12 in Rockville Center, NY, on Long Island. He is 78.
The cause of her death, in hospital, was breast cancer, which she had been living with for 38 years, her son, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, said.
Mrs. Taylor-Corbett, who grew up in Denver, moved to New York at age 17 to attend the School of American Ballet. His dream of creating a career en pointe did not last long.
“I am really doesn’t fit to be a professional dancer,” he said in a 1977 interview with the New York Times. “But I have a gift for drama and movement.”
He also has a gift for connecting with audiences, as evidenced by his work on Broadway shows like “Chess” (1988) and “Titanic” (1997), Hollywood movies like “Vanilla Sky” (2001) and “Bewitched” (2005), and entertainment-minded ballets like “Seven Deadly Sins” (2011), the New York City Ballet production of the 1933 work by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, originally choreographed by George Balanchine, which he directed and choreographed.
“My goal as a dancer and an artist is to understand,” she told The Times. “Dance should not be a mental experience that the dancers have and the audience. I want the dancers to communicate something and for the audience to receive the same. “
A pioneering female ballet choreographer in a predominantly male domain, she prioritized thinking as much as precision in such crowd-pleasing work as “Chiaroscuro” (1994), for City Ballet.
Melissa Podcasy, the theater director who often works with Ms. “Lynne’s ballets live in people — people with feelings of love and loss, joy and sorrow, regret and redemption,” Taylor-Corbett said in an email.
Her ballet face, “Great Galloping Gottschalk” (1982), based on the work of 19th-century New Orleans writer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, emphasized this principle. Her production, for the American Ballet Theater in New York, received mixed reviews from Anna Kisselgoff in the New York Times, but Ms. Kisselgoff admitted that he was “excited and encouraged” and “progress with the public. “
“In fact, the whole house is given to Miss Taylor-Corbett and the tennis player who is welcome reserved for occasional masterpieces, and the ‘Great Galloping Gottschalk’ certainly is not,” Ms. Kisselgoff wrote. “It’s basically a crowd-pleaser.”
But that’s the point. Mrs. “I wanted to dance for a bigger audience,” Taylor-Corbett said in 1977. “It’s not a big deal.”
His ambition reached its climax with a 1999 Broadway musical revue. “Swing!” which he both choreographed and directed. Just taking the reigns of a major production was an achievement for a woman at that time. “Many leaders to be a man“he said in a video interview last year, “and I have very few female colleagues who are successful at it, so limit the model.”
“Swing!,” a survey of the various forms of swing dance that flourished during the big time, is “a celebration of our american dance. “ he said in a video interview in 2013. The show has no dialogue; his unique narrative through music and dance – including a special acrobatic bungee number. He said “It’s a craft not a support in a way,” but as a huge party.
In a less-than-charitable review for The Times, Ben Brantley called “Swing!” “a musical revue that will use it exclamation point really,” arguing that she “seems to exist in some squeaky-clean, confectionary limbo.” However, the show earned Ms. Taylor-Corbett nominations for several awards, including Tonys as an artist and director.
Lynne Aileen Taylor was born on December 2, 1946, in Denver, the second of six daughters of Travis Henry Taylor, a high school principal, and Dorothy (Johnson) Taylor, a music teacher. and the Juilliard-taught concert pianist who gave Lynne. his early teaching of music and dance.
After graduating from Littleton High School in Littleton, Colo., a suburb of Denver, in 1964, Lynne went to New York, where she succeeded as a hatcheck girl for a Mafia club and a usher at the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater) at Lincoln Center, home of the New York City Ballet. Patrolling the aisles gives him the opportunity to learn about the artist’s work as well Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine.
Although she fell short of her dream of becoming a prima ballerina, Ms. Taylor-Corbett made her mark as a dancer. He toured Africa and the Middle East in the 1960s as the only white person there Alvin Aileydance company.
After leaving the company, he danced on Broadway in shows including “Promises, Promises,” 1968 music by Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach, and Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s “See you” (1973). She later auditioned for the role of Cassie in “A Chorus Line.”
Gradually, however, she began to see her future in acting, although she continued to dance for many years. “Five years ago my job meant my legs and arms and body,” he told The Times in 1977, “and today my mind and heart are included.”
His work changed in 1972 when he helped found the Dance Collection, a company that uses narrative, poetry and song with the goal of “changing the image of dance, making it’s fun and art,” The Times said. With little interest in the intellectual frontiers of dance, its founders jokingly refer to themselves as “derrière-garde.”
He later carved out a place in Hollywood – not to mention the 1980s – by laying the steps for Kevin Bacon’s famously acrobatic solo dance in “Footloose” (1984), Herbert Ross’s feel-good film about a Midwestern boy hoofing his way through a small town.
In addition to his son, Ms. Taylor-Corbett is survived by five sisters, Sharon Taylor Talbot, Kelly Taylor, Janny Murphy, Leslie Taylor and Kathleen Taylor. Her marriage to Michael Corbett, a music director, ended in divorce in 1983.
Mrs. Taylor-Corbett has worked with ballet companies around the world, including more than 25 years at the Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, N.C. In 2009, she was nominated for Drama Desk Award for choreography for “My Vaudeville Man!” which he also taught.
In recent years Ms. Taylor-Corbett was taken along “Distant Thunder,” The Native American-themed musical he created with his son, a Broadway actor himself, starred in an Off Broadway production that had a limited run through the fall.
“Distant Thunder,” featuring an indigenous cast, focuses on a member of the Blackfeet Nation who was removed from the tribe’s land as a child, only to return years later. wants to be a successful lawyer with big projects. The subject matter is beyond her current lifestyle, but Shaun Taylor-Corbett said, her mother is always looking to push past her comfort zone to tell new stories.
“All life should have some production,” Ms. Taylor-Corbett said in a 2024 video interview, “but the life of an independent artist requires constant production. I mean, how do we make who we are? I believe it’s important to tell our stories, and leave the wisdom that we can.”