Carol Mezzacappa, who died October 12 at age 47, was a dancer, choreographer, and founder of the Charles Weidman Dance Foundation, which seeks to preserve the legacy of one of the founders of modern dance.

Through the associated groups that Mezzacappa ran with her husband, Craig Gabrian, also a dancer, she produced performances for audiences and taught dance to children at New York schools and parks.

Charles Weidman was an early partner of Martha Graham when they were members of the Denishawn group in the 1920s. Weidman went on to found his own New York company with his long-time partner, Doris Humphrey, in 1928. The two created a body of work and a distinct style of movement that Mezzacappa worked to preserve. Weidman also choreographed dozens of Broadway shows, and was known for introducing comic flourishes. Among his students were Jose Limon, Gene Kelly, and Bob Fosse. The story is often told that Weidman at first had trouble attracting male students, so he offered free tuition for relatives of his female students – and then charged them $2 a lesson when they missed class.

Mezzacappa met Weidman at a master class he taught in the early 1970s at Brooklyn College. Taken with Weidman, she began studying with his dance company. After graduating with an MFA in performing arts management, she took over administration of the Brooklyn College dance program.

Weidman died in 1975 and was widely eulogized – Alvin Ailey devoted his company’s season to Weidman’s memory – but his legacy seemed to fade, in part because his work had not found a place in modern dance instruction at colleges.

Mezzacappa created the Weidman foundation, then founded Dance Consort: Mezzacappa-Gabrian with her husband. In 1985, the two founded Young Dancers In Repertory as a professionally oriented teenage touring ensemble.

After a decade of scraping by on small grants and bartering dance pedagogy for studio space at schools and community centers, Young Dancers In Repertory found a permanent space in a brownstone in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. At the time of her death, about 100 students were enrolled in classes there.

With the Dance Consort, Mezzacappa revived many of Weidman’s most famous dances, including “Brahms Waltzes,” originally created for Martha Graham; “Bargain Counter,” about a floor-walker in a department store who is repeatedly trampled by a mob of female shoppers; “Lynch Town,” created in the 1930s and based on a lynching of a black man in Omaha, Neb., and “Fables for Our Time,” two volumes of short pieces based on the wry tales of James Thurber.

Mezzacappa also created her own dance pieces based on Weidman’s distinctive techniques involving fall and recovery and movement through resistance.

The consort and students gave joint performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and other New York venues, and Mezzacappa had residencies and taught at several institutions, including New York University, Columbia Teacher’s College, SUNYPurchase, and dance programs abroad in Taiwan, France, and Portugal.

In 2001, Mezzacappa was the motivating force behind a series of performances for a centennial celebration of Weidman’s birth, at the University of Nebraska at his hometown of Lincoln.

She performed as late as August.

Carol Mezzacappa

Born December 23, 1956, in Brooklyn; died October 12 in Brooklyn of brain cancer; survived by her husband and her parents.