Louis Paul Falco
August 2, 1942-March 26, 1993
Born in New York City, Louis Falco got his start in the dance world in the sixties with his experimental Louis Falco Dance Company, which staged dance works on street corners, beaches and shopping malls. He performed with Rudolf Nureyev on Broadway, choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and numerous European ballets and choreographed dances for the Academy Award winning film "Fame" in 1980. He crossed over to the figure skating world in 1985, adapting a dramatic piece called "Black and Blue", first performed with dancers at the Teatro Olimpica in Rome, to the ice for Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean's tour. Louis passed away on March 26, 1993 at the age of fifty.
Louis' obituary from "The New York Times": "Louis Falco, a former principal dancer with the Jose Limon Dance Company and an internationally known modern-dance choreographer, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 50. The cause was AIDS, said Alan Sener, a personal assistant and former principal dancer in Mr. Falco's company. From his earliest professional appearances as a young member of the Jose Limon Dance Company in the mid-1960's, Mr. Falco made a strong impression as a dancer of distinctive presence and highly developed technical resources, often in roles Limon had created for himself. By 1967, when Mr. Falco presented his first formal program of his own dances performed by his own company, the Louis Falco Dance Company, he was hailed as one of the finest dancers of his generation and as a choreographer of exceptional promise. Taking the Doris Humphrey-Limon principle of falls and recoveries and adding tension and playfulness, Mr. Falco went on to create an individual choreographic style known, by the late 1970's, for reliance on pure dance rather than narrative and for its explosive energy, sensuality and chic. His good-looking, technically gifted dancers moved across the stage as ordinary people who happened to communicate with one another through movement. Celebrated as the essence of a contemporary artist, Mr. Falco set many of his dances to popular music and commissioned sets by popular artists like Robert Indiana and Marisol. 'I think my works were gutsy,' he told an interviewer in 1977, three years before he created dances for 'Fame,' beginning a career in film that led to the disbanding of his dance company in 1983. 'It comes from growing up on the Lower East Side. I don't have the same taboos as other people. I don't censor. I have a certain freedom that others don't.' The handsome, mop-headed choreographer also attributed his style to his Italian heritage. 'My father was born in Naples, where there is a kind of robust gaiety,' he continued. 'I don't come from a quiet, subtle background.' One of his goals, he said, was to 'create earthquakes onstage.' Mr. Falco, who was born on the Lower East Side, began dancing professionally even before his graduation from the High School of Performing Arts. He performed with the company of Charles Weidman, who was an early inspiration to the young dancer, and joined the Limon company in 1960. He left the company in 1970, three years after he began to choreograph. His first program of works included a Falco signature work, 'Argot'. Other major works were 'Huescape', 'Caviar', 'Sleepers', 'Journal', 'Escargot' and 'Caravan', which was created for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Mr. Falco also choreographed pieces for La Scala Opera Ballet, Netherlands Dans Theater, Ballet Theatre Contemporain de Nancy, Ballet Rambert, Tanz-Forum der Oper der Stadt Koln and the Boston Ballet, as well as several American opera companies. He performed as a guest dancer at La Scala and with Rudolf Nureyev on Broadway. His company was chosen to inaugurate the Joyce Theater in 1983. In recent years Mr. Falco worked in film, video and television, choreographing sequences in the films 'Angel Heart,' 'Leonard Part VI' and 'Off and Running.' He wrote and developed material for film, television and the stage, and choreographed advertisements and music videos for artists like Prince, the Cars and Ricky Scaggs. He is survived by his sisters, Anna Falco Lane and Pauline Ferruzza, and a brother, Edward."
Christopher Dean's memories of Louis from "Ice & Roller Skate" magazine: "That was exciting working with him. It's different. He has really different ideas. You can really tell the difference between choreographers and what they're lookng for. You're learning the whole time. It's like a school thing almost. You see where the reasoning's coming from and what they're trying to do. Sometimes there's a problem when you know right away what's going to work and the choreographer doesn't necessarily know because he's not ice oriented. So sometimes it gets a bit slow. But usually after the first couple of days, it becomes more productive - and quicker... We get on well with a contemporary choreographer like Louis Falco or a Twyla Tharp because they're type of dance is more conducive to ours. It's certainly more down into it, more earthy. In the particular work we did with Falco, it was more direction as opposed to straight choreography. We were getting a lot into characters as opposed to just dance. We're trying to get emotions over. We try to portray different characters at different times so it was more of a direction piece."
*Source for inclusion: Obituaries, The New York Times, March 27, 1993
