Faculty

Gillian Lynne studied at the Royal Academy of Dancing, the Cone-Ripman School, the Arts Education School with Volkova, Preobrajensk and others, and made her debut with the Ballet Guild in 1943.  She then debuted with Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1944 and became a principal in the Royal Ballet between 1946-51; her many roles included the Black Queen in Checkmate, the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty and Queen of the Wilis in Giselle.  In 1951 she became a star dancer at the London Palladium and followed on to become one of the finest stage dancers of her generation, appearing on television and in musicals before turning to choreography.   

She even choreographed, narrated and mimed all the roles in Peter and the Wolf for the BBC!  She became 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 Cats, which was recognised with a new category of Olivier Award, specially created for her to acknowledge Outstanding Achievement of the Year in a Musical.  Gillian’s fifty-plus Broadway and West End shows include Tonight at Eight, Once Upon a Time, The Match Girls, Tomfoolery, Jeeves Takes Charge, Cabaret, The Roar of the Greasepaint, Pickwick, How Now Dow Jones, Collages, The Ambassador, The Card, Phil The Fluter, Hans Christian Andersen, The Yeoman of the Guard, My Fair Lady, Songbook, Phantom of the Opera, Dick Whittington and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  For the Royal Shakespeare Company The Boyfriend, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors, The Way of the World, As You Like It, Once in a Lifetime and The Secret Garden. Gillian’s opera productions include The Trojans, The Midsummer Marriage, The Flying Dutchman, Parsifal and  Bluebeard.  Ballets include Journey (for the Bolshoi Ballet), Fool on the Hill (with Sir Robert Helpmann for the Australian Ballet), Lippizaner, The Brontes, and Some You Win for Irek Mukhamedov’s Company.  

She  was  commissioned  by  the  BBC  to make a piece to honour L. S. Lowry’s Centenary and created the BAFTA winning A Simple Man with music by Carl Davis, which was subsequently made into a stage ballet for Northern Ballet Theatre.  Also on television, Gillian has directed The Various Ends of Mrs F’s Friends, Easy Money, The Look of Love and The Morte d’Arthur, which won the Samuel G Engel Award in America.   She staged many of The Muppet Show for ATV and her 11 feature films include Half a Sixpence, Man of La Mancha and Yentl. She was awarded the Austrian Silver Order of Merit for her production of Cats in Vienna, a Moliere award for Cats in Paris, was one of the “21 for the 21^st” chosen by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation of America and in 2001 she was honoured by the Royal Academy of Dance with the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award. Her current projects include a ballet, a film, two musicals and a dramatic play.  Gillian is also writing her autobiography.

Lynn Wallis graduated from the Royal Ballet Senior School in 1965 into the Royal Ballet Touring Company, becoming Ballet Mistress at the school in 1969, a position she held until 1982, when she was made Deputy Principal. During this time she reproduced a great many ballets from classical repertoire for the school performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and other venues. In 1984, at the invitation of Erik Bruhn, she joined the National Ballet of Canada, as Artistic Co-ordinator, and in 1986 she became Associate Artistic Director, with Valerie Wilder, and Co-Artistic Director from 1987 to 1989. In 1990, she was appointed Deputy Artistic Director of English National Ballet with special responsibility for Mid-scale touring, the Education and Community Unit, Choreographic workshop and English National Ballet School.

Lynn Wallis joined the Royal Academy of Dance in 1994 as Artistic Director and is responsible for setting and maintaining the standards of dance training world-wide, developing the Academy’s Syllabus and planning courses internationally for students. In 2001 she became Chair of the RAD’s Board of Examiners. Lynn was appointed Honorary President of the Greek region of the RAD in June 2000. More recently she has been involved in the introduction of the new marking system and the accreditation of RAD examinations by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England and its partner regulatory authorities in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Lynn was chairman of an artistic panel of dance professionals who wrote The Foundations of Classical Ballet Technique and was instrumental in leading the artistic panel in writing the sequel, The Progressions of Classical Ballet Technique. In 2001 Lynn was nominated and short-listed for the European Women of Achievement Awards.