Maude Lloyd (1908–2004). South African dancer and critic

Maude Lloyd was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She trained there with Helen Webb, who had been a pupil of Enrico Cecchetti, but arrived in London in 1926 to become one of Marie Rambert’s protégés. Lloyd was to remain with Ballet Rambert, with brief intervals dancing in other companies, until 1940. During that time she developed into a remarkable ballerina, undertaking a cascade of entirely different roles and bringing her intelligence, sensitivity and grace to them all. She was muse to many choreographers, and although Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, and Andrée Howard, to name but a few, created wonderful ballets for her, but it was with Antony Tudor that she developed a special rapport.

Tudor and Lloyd brought out the best in each other. Tudor formed his own company, London Ballet, in 1938, and Lloyd and another of Tudor’s dancers, Peggy van Praagh, attempted to keep the company alive when he went to the United States of America in 1940. It proved an impossible task without him, and the company was absorbed back into Ballet Rambert.

Lloyd married the writer and critic Nigel Gosling in 1939. In 1940, following 15 professional years of great acumen and acclaim, she decided to retire from dancing. She then became a dance critic herself, working in tandem with her husband under the joint sobriquet of Alexander Bland. Countless articles and reviews for The Observer newspaper were published by them, along with several important books. They were admirers and champions of Rudolf Nureyev, who became a close and dear friend to them. Maude Lloyd died in Kensington in 2004.