‘Footloose,’ ‘Swing!’ Choreographer Was 78

Choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who taught Kevin Bacon acrobatic dance moves for his starring turn in and received two Tony nominations for her efforts on Swing!, has died. She was 78.

Taylor-Corbett died Jan. 12 of breast cancer in Rockville Centre, New York, her son, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, told The New York Times.

A onetime dancer with Alvin Ailey’s dance company, Taylor-Corbett also served as a Broadway choreographer for 1981’s Shakespeare’s Cabaret, 1985’s The Boys of Winter, 1988’s Chess, 1994’s Sally Marr … and Her Escorts, 1997-99’s Titanic, 1997-98’s Jackie and 1999-2001’s Swing!, which she also wrote songs for and directed.

Swing!, a celebration of dance in the big band era, featured zero dialogue and was nominated for five Tonys, including best musical. Taylor-Corbett was up for best choreography and best direction of a musical.

In a 1984 interview, Bacon noted he was not a dancer when Taylor-Corbett worked with him to star as Ren McCormack, a teenager who aims to overturn a ban on dancing in a Texas town, in Footloose (1984), directed by Herbert Ross.

“I did a lot of gymnastic training and a lot of dance training. I would wake up and find new muscles that I never thought I’d had that were hurting,” he said. “It was real challenging and exciting.”

Taylor-Corbett’s film résumé also included The In Crowd (1988), Ross’ My Blue Heaven (1990), Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky (2001) and Nora Ephron’s Bewitched (2005).

“My goal as a dancer and choreographer is to be understood,” Taylor-Corbett once told the Times. “Dance should not be a cerebral experience that the dancers have and the audiences watch. I want dancers to communicate something and have the audience receive the same thing.”

One of six daughters, Lynne Aileen Taylor was born in Denver on Dec. 2, 1946. Her father, Travis, was a high school vice principal, and her mother, Dorothy, was a pianist and music teacher.

She moved to New York at 17 to attend the School of American Ballet and worked as an usher at Lincoln Center, the home of New York City Ballet.

Taylor-Corbett toured Africa and the Middle East in the late 1960s as a member of Ailey’s company for two seasons and danced on Broadway in Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach’s Promises, Promises, which debuted in 1968.

She took a turn toward choreography in 1972 when she and other dancers founded the Theater Dance Collection, and a decade later, she had a breakthrough with Great Galloping Gottschalk, a ballet based on the work of New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

Taylor-Corbett choreographed and/or directed more than a dozen off-Broadway musicals since 1987, including 1992’s Eating Raoul, 2009’s My Vaudeville Man! and last year’s Native American-themed Distant Thunder.

In addition to her son, survivors include her sisters, Sharon, Kelly, Janny, Leslie and Kathleen. Donations in her memory can be made to the Amas Musical Theatre for the future of Distant Thunder.