Pop dance choreographer and teacher Paul Lawrence Kennedy died at the age of 61. He died on March 16, 2002 of heart failure. Paul was born in Boston and learned to dance from his mother. By the early age of 12 he was already teaching others in his mother's Boston dance academy. In the '60s and '70s he arranged dances for singing groups and even toured with Gladys Knight and the Pips. He moved to LA in the late '70s and began working with major Motown artists such as the Temptations and Marvin Gaye. He choreographed moves to songs from Marvin Gaye's album "From Here, My Dear" for performances in 1979. He also worked with Michael Jackson on tap dancing. Kennedy devoted himself to teaching children after working with his sister Arlene in a Compton children's project. He and Arlene opened Universal Dance Theatre (later to become Universal Dance Design) in Inglewood, CA in 1982. When he moved his studio across town to the Fairfax area his students followed. In the meantime he continue to workd in the commercial dance world and choreographed an episode of the TV series "A Different World" in 1993. In 1998 Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso invited the Kennedy Tap Company to dance in Havana at the 50th anniversary celebration of National Ballet of Cuba. He alsways spoke of dance training in terms of life experience and the values it brought to his students. "They come here as children and stay until college," Kennedy told The Times. "No pregnancies, no drugs, and all the madness they miss."