Freddie Herko

Freddie (Fred) Herko was an avant-garde dancer and choreographer trained at Juilliard. He was member of the Judson Dance Theater, performing at its inaugural concert on July 6, 1962. He performed in Frank O'Hara’s "Love's Labor", and several of Andy Warhol’s earliest films including: "Haircut (No. 1), Kiss, The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys," and "Rollerskate" (also known as "Dance Movie"). Herko became a dramatic victim of drug excess and artistic passion, leaping to his death in 1964 at the age of 29.

Herko was associated with a group of habitués to Warhol’s Silver Factory on 47th Street including Ondine, Rotten Rita, and Billy Name. Nicknamed “mole people” on account of their intensive speed usage and subterranean habits — “mole because they were known to be tunneling towards some greater insanity that no one but this inner circle was aware of” (Woronov, p.62) — members of this group performed their manias and drug routines in a life/art blurring spectacle in crash pads and stages throughout the city. They are best remembered for their roles in many of Warhol's experimental films.

Freddie was a close friend of Diane di Prima, who writes of him in her biography "Recollections of my Life as a Woman". She met him in 1954 as he sat on a bench in the rain in Washington Square Park. He was “crying because autumn always made him sad.” (di Prima, p120) Later he would tell Diane that, “He needed speed to push his body so he could dance the way he wanted to. He felt otherwise he didn’t have a chance; he had come to dancing too late in life to make it work for him.” (di Prima, p.331)

Di Prima describes Freddie’s elegiac performance "For Sergio:" “He arrived in black tights and a leotard, with a fierce archaic face mask painted on his face, and whispered to us to kill all the lights: house lights, stage lights, everything. I noticed he was in toe shoes. Then I stood silent, in awe of what was about to happen — something sacred and diabolical all at once. Freddie had an antique wall sconce with a mirror, the kind that used to hold a candle, and he lit the taper he had placed in it. And in that dark and suddenly silent theatre with his back to the audience, he began laboriously and slowly to go down one side aisle of the theatre, across the front below the proscenium, and up the other side. En pointe. The only music was the sound of his deliberately exaggerated and labored breathing. And the slow scraping of his toe shoes on the rough floor. The light, the flickering light of the candle reflected his painted face in the mirror in his hand ... He was gone again before any of us could move.” (di Prima, pp.377-8)

On October 27th 1964, Freddie was strung out and homeless. He went to Johnny Dodd’ s apartment and took a bath. It is unclear whether he was brought by Dodd, or just showed up. Some accounts say Freddie invited a group to watch a performance. According to Dodd, Mozart’s Coronation Mass was playing as Freddie emerged from the bath and danced naked in the loft, “occasionally making a run toward the windows. At the time Dodd wondered whether this was going to be the "suicide performance" that Herko had been promising his friends during the weeks prior: "It was obvious that Freddy had to do it now: the time and the place were right, the decor was right, the music was right." (Bourdon, p172). As the music climaxed, Freddie leapt through the open widow. It was five flights down to Cornelia Street below.

Afterwards, Diane went to Deborah Lee’s apartment where some of Freddie’s things were stored. "She and I went through it together. Black velvet was everywhere. Many shards of mirrors. Magick wands made out of old bedposts. Feathers. Lace. Broken statuary. Scraps of fabric, or carpet. Everything thick with some dark energy. There was one whole attaché case of male pornography carefully cut out of magazines, as if for use in collage. On the floor in his room there was a book by Mary Renault open at the page where the king leaps into the sea. Where the ritual to renew the world is described. It was the closest we found to a suicide note." (di Prima, p.402)

Choreography

Original Dances (incomplete list)

* "Once or Twice a Week I Put on Sneakers and Go Uptown" (July 6, 1962).
* "For Sergio" [Sergio Gallardo] (1963)
* "The Palace of the Dragon Prince" (May 1-2, 1963)
* "Cleanliness Event with Poo-Poo Cushion Music" (June 10, 1963)
* "Binghamton Birdie" (June 23-24, 1963)
* Performance at 28 Bond (1964)

Performances (incomplete list)

* "Love's Labor" by Frank O'Hara
* "Fantastic Gardens" by Elaine Summers (Feb. 17-19, 1964)

Warhol Films

* "Rollerskate"–also known as "Dance Movie" (1963) -not preserved
* "Samson And Delilah" -not preserved
* "Haircut (No. 1)" (1963)
* "Kiss" (1963)
* "The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys" (1964) -usually assembled as part of "Screen Tests"

Notes

*David Bourdon, Warhol (NY: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1989)
*Diane di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (New York City: Penguin, 2001)
*Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (New York: Pantheon, 2003)
*Mary Woronov, Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory (London: Serpent's Tail, 2000)