Lynne Taylor-Corbett is a Tony Award-nominated choreographer and director whose colorful career includes work for New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater as well as Broadway musicals including Swing! 》) as entrusted. and films including “The End” died on January 12 in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York. She is 78 years old.
Her son, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, said the cause of her death in hospital was breast cancer, which she had survived for 38 years.
Ms. Taylor-Corbett grew up in Denver and moved to New York at age 17 to attend the School of American Ballet. Her dream of building a pointe career didn’t last long.
“I was never cut out to be a ballet dancer,” she told The New York Times in 1977. “But I have a flair for drama and action.”
She also has a gift for connecting with audiences, as evidenced by her roles in brilliant Broadway musicals such as “Chess” (1988) and “Titanic” (1997), as well as in “Vanilla Sky” (2001) and “Bewitched” (2005) can be seen in its performance in Hollywood movies. She directed and choreographed Seven Deadly Sins (2011), originally choreographed by George Balanchine.
“As a dancer and choreographer, my goal is to be understood,” she told The Times. “Dance shouldn’t be a cerebral experience for the dancer and the audience to watch. I want the dancer to be able to convey something and for the audience to receive the same thing.
A pioneering female ballet choreographer in a male-dominated field, she prioritized emotion and technical precision in beloved works such as City Ballet’s Chiaroscuro (1994).
“Lynn’s ballets are full of people—people full of emotions of love and loss, joy and sorrow, regret and redemption,” says principal dancer Melissa Podkasy, a frequent Taylor-Corbett collaborator. (Melissa Podcasy) said in an email.
Her breakthrough ballet “Great Galloping Gottschalk” (1982), based on the work of 19th-century New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, emphasized this principle. Her production for the American Ballet Theater in New York received decidedly mixed reviews from Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times, but Ms. Kisselgoff admitted that the work was “cheerful and uplifting” and ” It has been a huge success among the public”.
“Indeed, the packed house gave Miss Taylor-Corbett and the ballet the kind of wild reception reserved for the occasional masterpiece, and this Gottschalk was certainly not it,” Kieser said. Ms. Ergoff wrote. “It’s mostly about pleasing the crowd.”
But that’s the point. “I want to bring dance to a wider audience,” Ms. Taylor-Corbett said in 1977. “It’s not an elitist art.”
Her thirst for glamor reached its peak in the 1999 hit Broadway musical Swing!, which she choreographed and directed. For women at the time, being able to helm a major production was an achievement. “Most directors are men,” she said in a video interview last year, “and there are very few female colleagues who are successful in this area, so the role models are limited.”
“Swing!” surveys the many forms of swing dance prevalent in the big band era and is “a celebration of our American folk dance.” she said in a 2013 video interview. The show has no dialogue; its narrative is expressed entirely through music and dance – including a particularly acrobatic bungee jumping performance. “It’s not done as a revue in a linear way,” she said, “but as one big party.”
In a less charitable review in The Times, Ben Brantley called “Swing!” “a musical that takes the exclamation point seriously,” arguing that it “seems to take place in some neat, candy-like setting.” limbo”. Even so, the play earned Ms. Taylor-Corbett multiple award nominations, including Tony Awards for choreography and directing.
Lynne Aileen Taylor was born in Denver on December 2, 1946, to high school vice principal Travis Henry Taylor and music teacher, Juilliard graduate The second of six daughters of concert pianist Dorothy (Johnson) Taylor.
After graduating from Littleton High School in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, in 1964, Lynne traveled to New York City, where she worked as a hat girl in a Mafia club and performed in the New York State Theater (now New York State Theater) as an usher, eking out a living. Patrolling the aisles gave her the opportunity to study the work of choreographers such as Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine.
Although Ms. Taylor-Corbett did not achieve her dream of becoming a prima ballerina, she did leave her mark as a dancer. In the late 1960s, she toured Africa and the Middle East as the only white member of Alvin Ailey’s famous dance company.
After leaving the company, she appeared on Broadway, including in Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach’s 1968 musical Promise, Promise, and Cy Coleman and Caroline Leigh’s Seesaw ( 1973). She later served as Cassie’s understudy in “A Chorus Line.”
Slowly, however, she began to see a future in choreography, although she continued dancing for a few years as well. “Five years ago, my career meant my legs, arms and body,” she told The Times in 1977, “and today, my brain and my mind matter too.”
Her career took a turn in 1972, according to The Times, when she helped found Theater Dance Collection, a company that used narrative, poetry and song with the goal of “changing the image of dance and making it It has to be both interesting and artistic.” With little interest in dance’s intellectual frontiers, its founders jokingly called themselves “defenders.”
She would later become a fixture in Hollywood, not to mention a legend in the 1980s, laying the groundwork for Kevin Bacon’s famous acrobatic solo in “Footloose” (1984), which was performed by Herbert Herbert Ross’s feel-good film about a Midwestern boy who walks the trails with tiny hooves.
In addition to her son, Ms. Taylor-Corbett leaves behind five sisters: Sharon Taylor Talbot, Kelly Taylor, Jenny Murphy, Leslie Taylor and Katherine Taylor . Her marriage to music executive Michael Corbett ended in divorce in 1983.
Ms. Taylor-Corbett has worked with ballet companies around the world, including more than 25 years with Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, North Carolina. Nominated for a Drama Desk Award. She is also a director.
In recent years, Ms. Taylor-Corbett has become obsessed with “Distant Thunder,” a Native American-themed musical she created with her son, himself a Broadway actor, who last fall Starring in a limited-run Off-Broadway production.
“Distant Thunder,” starring Native actors, tells the story of a Blackfeet member who is removed from tribal land as a child and emerges years later as a successful lawyer with ambitious plans identity returns. The subject matter was beyond her direct life experience, but Sean Taylor-Corbett said his mother was always trying to push outside of her comfort zone to tell new stories.
“Every life requires a certain amount of invention,” Ms. Taylor-Corbett said in a 2024 video interview, “but the life of a freelance artist requires constant invention. I mean, how do we become who we are? I believe it is important to tell our stories and leave behind whatever wisdom we can.
