Gillian Lynne, CBE was a leading soloist with Sadlers Wells Ballet, the star dancer at the Palladium, starred with Errol Flynn in the movies and danced with all the greats on TV. She became instrumental in the development of jazz dance in Britain and her distinctive style led to her groundbreaking work on Cats. Gillian’s 50-plus Broadway and West End shows include (as director) Tonight at Eight, Once Upon a Time, The Match Girls Tomfoolery, Jeeves Takes Charge and Cabaret. For the Royal Shakespeare Company she co-directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream and staged The Comedy of Errors, The Way of the World, As You Like It, Once in a Lifetime and directed The Boyfriend at Stratford. As Choreographer and Stager her numerous productions include 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 and Songbook. Her work for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden includes The Trojans, The Midsummer Marriage, The Flying Dutchman and Parsifal, and for the ENO, the direction of Offenbach's Bluebeard. Gillian's ballets include A Simple Man, Lippizaner and the three-act ballet The Brontes. She is best known for her worldwide direction/choreography of Cats and her staging of The Phantom of the Opera for Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Her TV direction of Le Morte d'Arthur was awarded the Samuel G. Engel Award in America and her A Simple Man won the 1981 BAFTA for her direction. She staged many of the Muppets shows and her 11 feature films include Half a Sixpence, Man of La Mancha and Yentl. She directed a new play by Bill C. Davis called AVOW at the George Street Playhouse in America in 1986 and in 1997 staged Cats: The Video in London. In the spring of 1998 her new Bacharach/David musical (conception/direction/choreography) What the World Needs Now completed a successful run at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Also in 1998 she directed a ballet commissioned by the Bolshoi in Moscow and in the spring of 1999 she directed and choreographed Gigi at the VolksOper in Vienna. In December of 1999, her musical show for the Millennium, Dick Whittington, which again she directed and choreographed, opened at the Sadlers Wells in London. The year 2000 has seen Gillian create a new Jazz ballet, Some You Win... for Irek Mukhamedov as part of the Irek Mukhamedov and Company season at Sadlers Wells. In October 2000, Gillian danced the role of Lowry’s mother, her own choreography, in A Simple Man in honor of HRH Princess Margaret's Birthday Gala at Sadlers Wells. In the Autumn of 2000 she choreographed and musically staged The Secret Garden for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which opened in the West End in February 2001.