Louis Falco by Jack Mitchell
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In honor of LGBTQ+ History Month, GME presents a suite of photographs taken by Jack Mitchell of dancer and choreographer Louis Falco. Hailed as one of the finest performers of his generation, Falco was also a prescient multimedia artist. As a choreographer, Falco forecasted high-tech, computer-generated live entertainment that would become commonplace in the 21st century. After studying under Alwin Nikolais — dubbed the “Father of Multimedia Theater” — Falco collaborated with artists like Marisol, Robert Indiana, and William Katz to mount dances that featured everything from surreal props, to holograms, lasers, video monitors, and infinity boxes, as well as a giant Styrofoam fish in 1970's Caviar. This highly visual and tech-savvy approach begat music video collaborations with cutting-edge pop and new wave acts like Prince and the Cars, as well as the opportunity to choreograph the 1980 film Fame, which garnered Falco greater exposure and acclaim.
Dance wasn’t always Falco’s dream. Born in 1943 in New York City to Italian immigrants, Falco set out to become a photographer — which renders his collaborations with Jack Mitchell all the more fascinating. When he was accepted into the New York School of Performing Arts as a teenager, he traded the darkroom for the stage.
By the end of his high school tenure, Falco was studying with Charles Weidman (who is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern dance) and by 1960 he was dancing with the Jose Limon Dance Company. In 1964, Falco was personally selected by Limon to succeed him in the role of the Bull Fighter in Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias — a role created specifically for Limon by his mentor, Doris Humphrey. Falco would later note, "In terms of movement style, Jose was a great influence. I felt his movement offered the most freedom and most potential in terms of my own interest in developing a dramatic language.”
As noted in Falco’s New York Times obituary: “From his earliest professional appearances as a young member of the Jose Limon Dance Company… Mr. Falco made a strong impression as a dancer of distinctive presence and highly developed technical resource, often in roles Limon had created for himself.” During this time, Falco also sought out professional engagements with the dance companies of Alvin Ailey, Flower Hujer, and Donald MacKayle, though it was Limon whom he cited as his chief mentor.
In 1967, Falco broke out on his own, presenting his first full evening of original work at New York’s 92nd Street YMHA as “Louis Falco and A Company of Featured Dancers.” Within a year, Walter Terry of Saturday Review was praising Falco as “one of the finest young modern dancers anywhere in the world.” In 1969, he debuted one of his most famous pieces, TimeWright, which was photographically documented by Jack Mitchell. The New York Times praised the dance for pairing “an element of obscurity” with a “surface polish that aroused interested attention.”
“Louis Falco and A Company of Featured Dancers” went on to become the Louis Falco Dance Company which, according to London critics, was “the most adventuresome and stimulating modern dance company anywhere in the world.” By the 1970s, Falco’s choreographic style grew increasingly idiosyncratic, reflecting the nontraditional and rebellious ethos of the decade's counterculture. Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times in 1973: “This is a lovely company that annoys, more or less equally, the modern-dance traditionalists and the modern-dance avant-garde.” It was also during this period that Falco began collaborating with such distinguished performers as Rudolf Nureyev. In 1974, both dancers joined forces for a Broadway production of Jose Limon's The Moor's Pavane.
Falco was celebrated as “the essence of a contemporary artist” for choosing to choreograph his pieces to rock music popular at the time, thereby breaking the conventional modern dance paradigm. As Falco himself noted: "Modern dance has been basically doom and gloom… I wanted to make dances that were a part of our lives and I wanted to use the popular music we listened to while living those lives.” He also cultivated a choreographic style that was known “for [its] reliance on pure dance rather than narrative and for its explosive energy, sensuality, and chic.”
Falco passed away in 1993, at the age of 50, due to complications from AIDS, though his body of work and legacy lives on through the Louis Falco Repertory and in photographs like those taken by Jack Mitchell. Mitchell’s lens captures Falco’s “tempestuous charm” and “smoldering good looks,” and relishes his “powerful yet sensual physicality” that subverted modern dance traditions and imbued the art form with a heightened sense of excitement, curiosity, and expansiveness. Ultimately, these images crystallize the qualities that made Falco a trailblazer of the medium.
All photographs © The Estate of Jack Mitchell. The Estate of Jack Mitchell is exclusively represented by Gartenberg Media Enterprises, Inc., for placement of the archive and exhibition of his work. For inquires related to the Mitchell photography collection, contact GME's Fine Arts Curator, David Deitch, at david@gartenbergmedia.com.