Lynn Taylor-Corbett, a Tony Award-nominated choreographer and director whose colourful and diversified profession included commissions for New York Metropolis Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, in addition to Broadway musicals together with “Swing!” and movies together with “Footloose,” has died on January 12 at Rockville Centre, New York, on Lengthy Island. She was 78.
The reason for her demise in hospital was breast most cancers, which she had been battling for 38 years, stated her son Sean Taylor-Corbett.
Ms. Taylor-Corbett, who grew up in Denver, moved to New York at 17 to attend the Faculty of American Ballet. Her goals of making a profession en pointe didn’t final lengthy.
“I used to be never really fits to be a ballet dancer,” she stated in 1977. in an interview with The New York Instances. “However I had a present for theatrics and motion.”
She additionally had a present for connecting with audiences, as demonstrated by her work in exuberant Broadway musicals reminiscent of “Chess” (1988) and “Titanic” (1997), Hollywood films like “Vanilla Sky” (2001) and “Bewitched” (2005) and entertainment-oriented ballets reminiscent of “Seven Deadly Sins” (2011), a New York Metropolis Ballet manufacturing of the 1933 work. by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, authentic choreography by George Balanchine, which she directed and choreographed.
“My aim as a dancer and choreographer is to be understood,” she instructed The Instances. “Dance shouldn’t be a cerebral expertise that the dancers have and the viewers watches. I would like the dancers to speak one thing and the viewers to get the identical.”
A pioneering ballet choreographer in a predominantly male discipline, she prioritized emotion as a lot as technical precision in such crowd-pleasing works as “Lightning” (1994), for Metropolis Ballet.
“Lynn’s ballets are inhabited by folks — folks with feelings of affection and loss, pleasure and unhappiness, remorse and redemption,” Melissa Podkasi, a principal dancer who typically works with Ms. Taylor-Corbett, stated in an electronic mail.
Her breakthrough ballet, “The Great Galloping Gottschalk” (1982), based mostly on the work of Nineteenth-century New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, emphasizes this precept. Her manufacturing for the American Ballet Theater in New York acquired a decidedly blended assessment from Anna Kieselhoff in The New York Instances, however Ms. Kieselhoff acknowledged that it was “cheerful and uplifting” and “a huge success with the general public.”
“Actually, the total home gave Miss Taylor-Corbett and the ballet the form of delirious reception reserved for infrequent masterpieces, which ‘The Nice Galloping Gottschalk’ actually will not be,” Ms. Kisselhoff wrote. “He is primarily a superficial crowd pleaser.”
However that was the purpose. “I wish to carry the dance to a a lot bigger viewers,” Ms Taylor-Corbett stated in 1977. “This isn’t elite artwork.”
Her need to enchant reached its apotheosis with the hit 1999 Broadway musical revue. “Swing!” which she each choreographed and directed. Simply taking up the administration of a serious manufacturing was fairly an achievement for a girl in these days. “Most administrators they were men,” she stated in a video interview final 12 months, “and I had only a few feminine colleagues who have been profitable at it, so restricted function fashions.”
“Swing!”, a survey of the numerous types of swing dance that flourished throughout the large band period, was “a celebration of our American folk dance. she stated in a 2013 video interview. The present incorporates no dialogue; his narratives have been expressed solely by music and dance – together with a very acrobatic bungee quantity. “It is executed not as a revue in a linear manner,” she stated, “however as a large occasion.”
In a much less charitable assessment for The Instances, Ben Brantley known as “Swing!” “a musical revue that takes its exclamation mark seriously,” claiming that it “appears to be taking place in some squeaky clear, confectionary limbo.” However, the present earned Ms. Taylor-Corbett a number of award nominations, together with Tonys as choreographer and director.
Lynn Eileen Taylor was born on December 2, 1946. in Denver, the second of six daughters of Travis Henry Taylor, a highschool vice principal, and Dorothy (Johnson) Taylor, a music trainer and Juilliard-educated live performance pianist, who gave Lynn her early introduction to music and dance.
After graduating from Littleton Excessive Faculty in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, in 1964, Lynn headed to New York, the place she made ends meet as a mobster membership lady and usher on the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater ) at Lincoln Middle, house of the New York Metropolis Ballet. Patrolling the paths gave her the chance to review the work of grasp choreographers reminiscent of Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine.
Though she failed to comprehend her goals of turning into a prima ballerina, Ms Taylor-Corbett made her mark as a dancer. She toured Africa and the Center East within the late Nineteen Sixties as the one white member of the group Alvin Aileythe well-known dance firm.
After leaving the corporate, she danced on Broadway in reveals together with “Promises, Promises”, the 1968 musical by Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach and by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Lee “Seesaw” (1973). Later, she was an understudy for the function of Cassie in “A Refrain Line.”
Nonetheless, she slowly started to see her future in choreography, though she continued to bounce for a number of years. “5 years in the past my profession meant my legs, arms and physique,” she instructed The Instances in 1977, “and in the present day my mind and thoughts depend too.”
Her profession took a flip in 1972 when she helped discovered the Theater Dance Assortment, an organization that used quick tales, poetry and tune to “reimagine dance to make it enjoyable in addition to artwork,” in line with The Instances. With little curiosity within the mental limits of the dance, its founders jokingly referred to themselves because the “derrière‐garde”.
She later discovered her place in Hollywood – to not point out the legends of the 80s – by setting the steps for Kevin Bacon’s well-known acrobatic solo dance in “relaxed” (1984), Herbert Ross’s invigorating movie a couple of Midwestern teenager making his manner by small-town repression.
Along with her son, Mrs. Taylor-Corbett is survived by 5 sisters, Sharon Taylor Talbot, Kelly Taylor, Janie Murphy, Leslie Taylor and Kathleen Taylor. Her marriage to Michael Corbett, a music director, led to divorce in 1983.
Ms. Taylor-Corbett has labored with ballet firms world wide, together with greater than 25 years with Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2009 she was nominated for Drama Desk Award for choreography for “My Vaudeville Man!” which she additionally directed.
Lately Ms Taylor-Corbett has been consumed by it “Distant Thunder”, a Native American-themed musical she created together with her son, a Broadway performer himself, who starred in an Off Broadway manufacturing that had a restricted run final fall.
Distant Thunder, that includes an indigenous solid, focuses on a member of the Blackfeet Nation who was banished from tribal lands as a boy, solely to return years later as a profitable lawyer with bold plans. The topic is exterior of her fast life expertise, however Sean Taylor-Corbett stated his mom was at all times making an attempt to push herself past her consolation zone to inform new tales.
“Each life requires a specific amount of invention,” Ms. Taylor-Corbett stated within the 2024 video interview, “however the lifetime of a contract artist requires fixed invention. I imply, how do any of us grow to be who we’re? I consider it is very important inform our tales and depart behind what knowledge we will.”
