David Gayle (1941?-). British dancer, teacher, director and founder of the Yorkshire Ballet Seminars
David Gayle was born and brought up in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. He started his training under Margaret Allenby-Jaffé, and danced with The Royal Ballet during the 1960s. On leaving the company he was the first man to enrol on the newly-formed Teacher Training Course at The Royal Ballet School, which was conceived by Ninette de Valois and at that time also taught by her. Gayle then went on to teach in Britain, and also in the United States of America with Kathleen Croften, who had danced in companies that included Anna Pavlova’s, and had studied with Nicholas Legat and Olga Prebrajenska. All this led to Gayle becoming fascinated by the living history of the ballet world and its great personalities.
On one of his trips back to England from the United States, Gayle had the idea of doing something for his home town, Ilkley, in Yorkshire, and for young people who lived far from London. Thus the Yorkshire Ballet Seminars were born in Ilkley in August 1975. They were opened by Ninette de Valois herself, and the first master class was given by Alicia Markova. Later classes were also given by Anton Dolin, Markova’s long-time partner. By hard work and enterprise, Gayle managed to obtain funding for the project, and to put it on a firm footing, so much so that the present directors of both The Royal Ballet (Kevin O’Hare) and The Royal Ballet School (Iain Mackay) were early graduates of the seminars.
Under Gayle’s direction some of the greatest names in the ballet world came to Yorkshire to teach, to talk and to give master classes. From The Royal Ballet came Pamela May, Julia Farron, Annette Page, Maryon Lane, Peter Wright, Barbara Fewster, Beryl Grey, Leslie Edwards, Moira Shearer, Svetlana Beriosova, Christopher Gable, Lynn Seymour, David Wall and Alfreda Thorogood. Representing an earlier era were Alexandra Danilova, one of George Balanchine’s first muses in Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the fabulous “baby ballerina” Irina Baronova, from De Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. In 1999 the Seminars moved from Ilkley to York, where they still continue.
In 1987 Gayle was invited by The Royal Ballet School to set up a similar scheme there. He retired from running the Yorkshire Seminars in 2005, when Marguerite Porter took over the direction. David Gayle was appointed an MBE for his services to dance in 1991.