Gillian Lynne, who has died aged 92, did more than anyone to change the status and quality of British musical theatre choreography. It is good that she lived long enough to see the New London theatre – the original home of Cats, of which she was a vital creative part – renamed in her honour. It was a fitting tribute. Before Lynne, dance often seemed a pleasant afterthought to homegrown shows. Her achievement was to make it a driving force.
Lynne’s ability to see the dramatic possibilities of dance derived from her training in classical ballet. She joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (later to become the Royal Ballet) during the second world war and went on to dance the Black Queen in Checkmate and the Queen of the Wilis in Giselle. She worked with top figures such as Frederick Ashton and Ninette de Valois and acknowledged the influence of Robert Helpmann who, as actor, dancer and choreographer, had an extraordinary theatrical flair.
In her early years, Lynne injected vitality into a number of humdrum British musicals such as Pickwick, Love on the Dole and The Card but a turning-point came in 1976 when Trevor Nunn invited her to choreograph an RSC musical version of The Comedy of Errors. Her dance numbers became an expression of ecstasy and joy, and it was that show that inspired Cameron Mackintosh to engage Nunn and Lynne as co-creators of an improbable musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on TS Eliot’s cat poems.
The show’s teething troubles are well documented but what made Cats a landmark musical in 1981 was that the dance grew out of the situation – a midnight convention of felines – and propelled the action. Within that framework, Lynne created some outstanding numbers: Wayne Sleep did head-spinning turns and leaps as Magical Mr Mistoffelees and the Jellicle Ball became a riot of orchestrated movement. Choreographers such as Agnes de Mille and Bob Fosse had made dance central to American musicals. For the first time, in Cats, we saw that happening on a British stage.
Lynne developed her skills in later Lloyd Webber musicals such as The Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love. When she choreographed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Palladium in 2002, Alastair Macaulay, now the dance critic of the New York Times, pointed out that she made use of steps from The Nutcracker and showed a more brilliant command of dance vocabulary than many artists working for prestigious national ballet companies.
Lynne’s legacy, however, lies all around us in the work of such noted successors as Stephen Mear (Gypsy), Bill Deamer (Follies) and Peter Darling (Matilda). She came into a world where dance often seemed like an irrelevant interlude and, through her theatrical skill and tireless industry, turned it into something integral to the musical form.
