Dame Gillian Lynne

(1926 - 2018)

Gillian Lynne’s career started at the age of fourteen: leap-frogging from the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to Star Dancer at the London Palladium to a film opposite Hollywood royalty Errol Flynn.

It was this original style and energy that helped make Gillian the leading director/ choreographer of her generation; best-known for her groundbreaking staging and choreography for Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

She directed over 60 productions in the West End and on Broadway; worked on 21 feature films and hundreds of television productions as producer, director, choreographer or performer.

She received numerous accolades including two Olivier Awards; the first for Outstanding Achievement for her Choreography of Cats in 1981 – while in 2013 she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement ‘Special’ Olivier. Other awards include: Vienna’s 1983 Silver Order of Merit for the first proscenium arch production of Cats, Golden Rose of Montreux Award for The Muppet Show Series, Engel Television Award (USA) as director for her conceptual drama The Morte d’Arthur, a BAFTA for her dance drama A Simple Man directed for BBC TV, a Moliere Award for Cats in Paris in 1989. The Royal Academy of Dance elected her Vice President in 2012. Gillian was honoured with CBE (1997) and DBE in the 2014 New Years Honours List for her services to Dance and Musical Theatre. In June 2018 Andrew Lloyd Webber officially renamed the New London Theatre after her, the first non-royal woman to be honoured in this way in the West End: the Gillian Lynne Theatre. The grace, energy and spirituality of Gillian Lynne’s artistry continues worldwide.

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Peter Land

Peter Land has been a member of both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company performing with Sir Michael Gambon, Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Sir Patrick Stewart. He made his Broadway debut with Margaret Tyzack and Dame Harriet Walter in All’s Well That Ends Well and has been seen Off-Broadway in the musicals: Colette Collage, Oh! Coward and as Sylvia St Croix in Ruthless! Recently Peter appeared as Howard Hughes in the HBO Series: Autopsy and his numerous West End credits include: My Fair Lady; The Phantom of the Opera; Pickwick; Cabaret; and Dear World, firstly in London with Betty Buckley, and then again with Tyne Daly in America.

Peter co-founded Soulife Records in California in 1999, achieving success with their first signed artist, Sunshine Anderson, whose debut single - Heard It All Before and debut CD - Your Woman - topped the Billboard Album and R&B/HipHop Charts during 2001. Along with many performances on Cast Albums and Radio/TV, Peter has also recorded On The Street Where You Live with Placido Domingo, appeared in the 1991 & 1993 Royal Variety Show, and recorded the CD - That’s What Friends Are For! with Robert Meadmore.

He and his wife Dame Gillian Lynne collaborated as performer, producer and director over 16 times.