A special tribute to Dame Gillian Lynne, who passed away on the 1 July 2018 at the age of 92. Much has been written about Gillian in recent days. She was Britain’s leading choreographer. She worked on more than 60 shows in the West End and Broadway and had a long-running collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber. She is particularly well known for Cats and Phantom of the Opera. Prior to this she was also an outstanding classical dancer – a soloist with the Royal Ballet (formerly the Sadlers Wells Ballet). She was a contemporary and friend of our Founder, Doreen Bird, and praised the quality of the training which we offer, generous in her praise of Doreen, and delighted to see the college continue to progress and grow. Gillian was a Trustee of the Doreen Bird Foundation for a period of time and we are very grateful to have had her as a long serving Patron of the College. She was our Guest Speaker in 2014 and we were delighted to welcome her to College as recently as this year, when she came to see our students perform in Cre8. No words can fully articulate her contribution to the theatre. Dame Gillian Lynne transformed the landscape of dance and musical theatre. We will think of her when we visit the Gillian Lynne Theatre, a fitting tribute to a very remarkable woman.
Our patron, Gillian Lynne (CBE), had the title of Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) conferred upon her in the 2014 New Years Honours List for her services to Dance & Musical Theatre. Gillian did the lot! Leading soloist in the original Sadler’s Wells Ballet, star dancer at the London Palladium, acted opposite Errol Flynn in the movies and danced with all the greats on early TV. She was instrumental in the development of jazz dance in Britain and her distinctive style – a fusion of classical and jazz – led to her groundbreaking work on the world famous Cats (Olivier Award- London, Moliere Award- Paris) and also on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s worldwide hit Phantom of the Opera for which she provided the musical staging and choreography. She received the Mr Abbott Award in 1999. Fifty-plus Broadway and West End shows include – Tonight at 8.30, Love on the Dole, The Match Girls, Tomfoolery, Jeeves Takes Charge, Cabaret, The Roar of the Greasepaint, Pickwick, The Card, Phil The Fluter, Hans Christian Andersen, My Fair Lady, Songbook and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. For the Royal Shakespeare Company- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors, The Way of the World, As You Like It, Once in a Lifetime, The Boyfriend and The Secret Garden.
Gillian’s opera productions include Bluebeard (ENO); The Trojans, The Midsummer Marriage, The Flying Dutchman, and Parsifal (ROH). Her ballets are Breakaway, Lippizaner, The Bröntes, On Such A Night(Northern Ballet) and Journey (Bolshoi).
Her direction for television included: Morte d’Arthur (Samuel G Engel Award); Australian Ballet’s The Fool on the Hill (ABC-TV’s Best Musical and Best Production) while her A Simple Man (BBC) won a BAFTA for her direction and choreography. Feature films include A Wonderful Life, Half a Sixpence, Man of La Mancha and Yentl. She staged many of the famousMuppet Shows.
Other projects included Phantom – the Las Vegas Spectacular, The Imaginary Invalid for the Washington Shakespeare Theatre, Triple Sensation for CBC, Now or Never – starring Peter Land at the King’s Head Theatre, the 25th Anniversary Celebration at the Royal Albert Hall of Phantom of the Opera and the completion of the first volume of her autobiography A Dancer in Wartime published by Chatto & Windus.
She was awarded the Austrian Silver Order of Merit for her production of Cats in Vienna, and in 2001 she was honoured by the Royal Academy of Dance with the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award. Gillian was awarded the CBE in 1997. Gillian married Peter Land in 1980.
