Margaret Dale (dancer)

Margaret Dale (December 30, 1922 — January 28, 2010) was a British dancer who later became a producer and Director of Dance for BBC television.

Early life and career

Born as Margaret Elisabeth Bolam in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she studied ballet with Nellie Potts and at Sadler's Wells School before joining the company in 1939.

Her talent for character-playing rapidly won her notice but she was also a good classicist: as a fairy soloist in the celebrated Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn that reopened the Royal Opera House in 1946; as the Sugar Plum Fairy; and as Swanilda in Coppelia.

Between the 1940s and 1950s, she showed a flair for comedy, and sparkling technique when the company toured Europe and North America after World War II ended. She danced lead and soloist roles.

In 1953 Dale made her debut as a choreographer, creating a Sherlock Holmes ballet, The Great Detective, in which she cast the future star choreographer Kenneth MacMillan in a double role as Holmes and his nemesis Moriarty. After joining the BBC, Margaret later became a producer and director of dance broadcasts. When the Bolshoi Ballet visited London in 1956, she filmed Act II of Swan Lake with Galina Ulanova who was dancing Odette.

She set up a studio session with the Bolshoi Ballet in the lakeside act of Swan Lake during their famous 1956 debut tour to London. This attracted 12 million viewers, and was the first of several television films she made during visits to London by the Bolshoi and the Kirov. In 1962 the BBC contracted her to film nine one-act productions with the Royal Ballet over three years, among them Dame Ninette de Valois's The Rake's Progress and Checkmate, and Ashton's Les Rendezvous, The Dream, and Monotones.^{[citation needed]}

One of Dale's greatest achievements came when she filmed Ashton's two-act ballet La Fille Mal Gardée, with its original cast for television, uncut, shortly after it had triumphed in both New York and Russia in 1960. Her black and white film documents the work's first cast and the choreographic details that were changed in subsequent performances. Dale's original cast television productions include Ashton's The Dream and Monotones ballets. Dale also produced documentaries on Gene Kelly, Rudolf Nureyev, Ninette de Valois, and others. She worked with up and comers such as John Cranko and Glen Tetley.^[1]

In 2006, after retiring from the BBC, Dale taught in Canada, chairing the department of dance at York University, Toronto.

Personal life

Margaret Dale was married and divorced and had no children. She died on January 28, 2010, aged 87.

Footnotes

1. ^ The Guardian, February 18, 2010

Obituaries

The Telegraph

NY Times

The Guardian

External links

• Margaret Dale at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Dale, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1922
Place of birth
Date of death	2010
Place of death