Biography

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Geraldine Stephenson was a dancer, choreographer, movement director and teacher on more than 150 films and television programmes and more than 200 stage productions. Her work was characterised by its immense range: from productions by young people to historical pageants and serious drama, with routines for The Two Ronnies along the way. She studied at Bedford College of PE where she studied with Joan Goodridge who, knowing Laban and Ullmann, encouraged Geraldine to study with them in the AMS, Manchester. In her second year she began leading morning warm-ups and soon was teaching with Laban at Esmé Church’s Northern Theatre School, Bradford. Her connection with the AMS weakened when it moved to Addlestone and she began a career of touring recitals with John Dalby. At the same time she was creating large pageants and was movement director for the 1951 revival of the York Mystery Cycle. In the 1960s she was working as a choreographer and movement director in television, film and on stage, while still directing public pageants. She was an inspiring teacher and between 2000 and 2007 took on Dick McCaw as a private pupil. 

Summary of Interview of December 2000

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Early Education, Bedford College of Physical Education. Joan Goodrich, the Inaugural Laban Guild Winter Course in Sheffield, 1946. From Bedford to the AMS, Manchester. Students at the AMS, Manchester. Teaching at the Northern Theatre School, Civic Theatre, Bradford. Theatre Workshop, the International Dance Competition Copenhagen. Movement Director of the York Mystery Plays 1951, 1954, 1957. All’s Well That Ends Well with Trevor Nunn. On movement in general. Working with actors and dancers, a search for movement with content. The Fairie Queen.  Solo Dance Recitals in the late 1940s and 1950s. 1979 Therese an opera by John Taverner. Vaclav Havel.  Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. In Re-Joyce with Maureen Lipman.  Working with David Giles in Television. 

The Interview

Early Education, Bedford College of Physical Education

I had always wanted to be an actress, a fact that made my father hit the roof.    For my High School Certificate I had wanted to take English and Music, but because I had to go to the college which was more scientific I took biology or something like that and music.  

I had just finished my High School Certificate and went to Bedford College of Physical Training and it was one the leading PT colleges then. I got into the college because my mother knew the PT teacher at my Grammar school. It was interesting because one learned a bit about Laban’s work but also because one learned physiotherapy. This was quite strenuous because in fact we were doing two full three-year trainings at the same time. But obviously the study of physiology and anatomy overlapped in both of them. In fact during the holidays I worked quite a lot in the hospitals to earn money to do more dancing. 

Q. The idea was that you wanted to be an actress, but since you couldn’t go to Drama School, you decided instead to go to a PT college.  

A. This was the college that my parents insisted that I go to. I went in the Autumn of 1943, towards the end of the war and graduated in July 1946. It was an interesting time because if it had been in the middle of the war I would have been a land girl or a nurse. But I got to college. It was an all women‘s college and the only time that we met men was when we had a session with the fire brigade and we had to enter a smoke filled tunnel on our knees, crawling through, with a fireman walking by our side. It was a strict college, and let me give you an example. We had to work every evening after classes which finished at 6.30, dinner was at 7.00 then you worked in your room between 8.00 – 10.00. You went out nowhere. When we heard on the radio that VE had been declared we all ran out into the gardens and began whooping with joy and prepared to celebrate, but we were sent back into our rooms to study. It was a very strict College. The Principal [Margaret Stansfeld] who was 89 was marvellous but some of the other older staff should never have been allowed to have girls in their care.  

Q. Although you were at college could you still pursue dancing?

Joan Goodrich, The Inaugural Laban Guild Winter Course 1946

I didn’t pursue it till afterwards, but during my three years there I was taught by Joan Goodrich, a fantastic teacher who she realised what my interests were. She had had a year’s training with Mary Wigman where she had been sent by the principal of the college. In January 1946 she told me and my room-mate that there was a course in Sheffield where Laban himself was teaching with Lisa Ullman, and though it was full she said there was often a chance of getting in through cancellations. So we contacted the secretary who was another member of staff at Bedford and indeed there was a cancellation and we got in. And that really was fantastic – there was such a mix of people, of all ages, shapes and sizes. All doing the work led by Laban and Lisa and someone called Lilla Bauer who had been in the Kurt Jooss Company, and Diana Jordan. All the big elements at that time were teaching at this course.  And the scales fell from my eyes. That was what made me want to do something to do with this movement. It liberated me.

Q. What were your first impressions of Laban as a man and as a teacher?

Well he was quite overpowering as a teacher. But he was very distant. In Sheffield I didn’t manage to speak to him, so he was remote to me personally; but to those he knew he was very friendly and he still had a lot of difficulty with his English even though he’d arrived in 1938, I think it was. He was very tall, or at least gave that impression – apparently he wasn’t really so tall. He was very straight and had a wonderful sense of humour – he immediately latched on to the English sense of humour. It was very ironical with lots of word-play.  Lisa Ullman never really quite latched on to the English sense of humour.   

The amazing thing in this course was its dynamic nature: to see people leaping in the air, throwing themselves on the ground, writhing and rolling, doing things we’d never seen. The expressiveness of it, and also the group work. The intensity of the work. There was also a woman called Sylvia Bodmer who was the third teacher in the triumvirate. The participants were from all walks of life. I had never seen such a conglomeration of such different people – all of them older than me - being so expressive and so dynamic.   But it was very much in beginning of things: although Laban had taken a few courses with Lisa before, they weren’t this big ones. And it was that year that The Laban Guild was formed. I am number 97 so it shows how many people were there at the course. This was a huge experience to be in a group, and I loved being inside the group and seeing things happening around me. Others preferred to be outside and not involve themselves. It’s possibly a psychological thing – one either prefers to be on the inside or on the outside.  

From Bedford to the AMS, Manchester.

While the whole thing was an inspiration, I didn’t know what do after that.  When I got back to college I only had six months left of my courses to run and I had to decide where I was going to teach PT. But of course I wasn’t going to teach PT. I never really any intention to teach. But it was then that Joan Goodrich said that Laban and Ulmann’s Art of Movement Studio was just forming in Manchester in Easter 1946. She knew them and had been teaching at the Sheffield course and so she got them both down to Bedford to see me dancing in our end of year demonstrations. Of course my parents had come down to see me as well. Joan then got my parents to meet Laban and Lisa and never did get to find out what they thought about them because they were good solid Yorkshire folk who normally never met such people. But of course there was the question of fees and so there was even more to pay out. But it was agreed then that I would go to the Studio in Autumn 1946. I went from there being 45 in our college to there being only 14 in our class at the Studio.   The atmosphere and excitement of the Sheffield course continued here. The newness and avant-garde quality of the teaching was stunning. We learned to see movement in everything – people, trees, paintings, machines – to observe the movement in how people walked, sat down, got up; how they stood when talking to each other etc. Movement for us was a heady brew as we writhed and leaped and rolled on the floor to percussion.

Students at the AMS, Manchester

But what is interesting is that there was Veronica Sherborne who became the great leader of therapeutic work, there was Valerie Preston Dunlop, and she became a learned authority on Laban, and Lorne Primrose who became one of the leading figures in a physical education college. All started to do Laban’s work then. All of these became very important figures in the movement.  There was also a 16-year old called Ronnie Curran and he went into the Jooss Ballet. But I had no idea what I was going to do with this training. It was a wonderful training with classes being led by Sylvia Bodmer, Laban and Lisa.  We got it fresh from the fountainhead. We learned eukinetics – the efforts - and spatial exercises with the icosahedron. And with Laban we did dance drama and – according to Valerie’s biography - he had done some of these dance dramas abroad. But he obviously adapted them because there were so few of us. We also did kinetography – the Labannotation, but I never took to that at all. The lesson were endless: there was a sort of time-table, but it was very free.

I did the first year as a student and wanted to stay on. But there were questions: would they have me and how could I afford the fees. I used to take an evening class in Bolton which helped at the Cesaro factory where they made frocks. It was an evening class for the workers there. But I was asked to play the piano for some of the classes in the second year as well as giving classes in anatomy and physiology and in music appreciation which I enjoyed doing. But the interesting thing in all that was that it made me think of inventive ways of teaching all these things. I learned how to improvise in my piano playing, and also wrote music which was published. We had done a lot of experiments with Sylvia Bodmer, inventing our own instruments and such like which was, at the time, very avant-garde. I worked in schools working on this movement and music work and we made six records under the title Listen and Move: there was nothing like it anywhere. 

Teaching at The Northern Theatre School, Civic Theatre, Bradford

I then continued into the third year – 1948 – and that was when Laban was taken very ill with Typhoid, in the Autumn and Winter. I received a message from him that I was to go and take his lessons with drama students at the Northern Theatre School in Bradford. I was terrified because I had never had anything to do with acting or actors - I knew nothing about it. In the morning I had the first years for 2 and a half hours, after lunch the second years for ninety minutes and then at 4 o clock the third years who were already in a some sort of children’s theatre group. Though I was terrified of them they were wonderful. Bernard Hepton was in this group, and a lot of this group were really very successful. Edward Petherbridge was also there when I was teaching there in my last year, 1953. I taught there five nearly years 1948 – 1953. But Laban was away between 10 weeks to three months. His only instruction to me was to limber up, do the efforts, and get them to improvise and to discuss the movement that they were using. And I got to love it.  According to Valerie Preston Dunlop’s biography, Esmee Church, the principal of the college and a great friend of Tyrone Guthrie, sent the message to Laban that I was doing fine. When he returned I became his assistant. It was because that I was at this college that I got the job at the York Mystery plays.

Theatre Workshop, The International Dance Competition Copenhagen

We did meet some members of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop but they shocked us a bit because they were very very revolutionary. Some of their members took part in an international dance competition in Copenhagen in summer 1947. There were groups from all over Europe. But everything went wrong for us, especially the lighting. When it was meant to be pitch black we got rosy dawn lighting. So it was just giggles from the audience: nonetheless we got an honourable mention. By that time I had got an abscess because I wasn’t eating enough fruit and vegetables. I had a two-penny pork pie every day for my lunch and an evening meal at my digs. And I was terrified that I wouldn’t get a part in this dance piece that was going to Copenhagen. I couldn’t bend my leg. 

Movement Director of the York Mystery Plays 1951, 1954, 1957

The Mystery Plays come about because they wanted students from Bradford to play small parts and to mingle in the crowd and for the boys to be devils, and they thought that their movement teacher should handle them. I don’t know whether Laban was asked to do – Valerie says he was – but I was asked to do it. He would never have wanted to do it – never!  I was engaged to work with Lucifer, played by an actor from London, and he was to fall down this flight of stairs – quite a big flight of stairs – whilst being chased by devils.  I was also asked to choreograph a flight of angels around the stables.  Nobody mentioned any crowd scenes. I went to York, rehearsed with the angels from Mount View School in York, met Lucifer, played by John van Eyssen – a man of great charm, which, of course you needed when playing such a part. So how could I choreograph this falling down the stairs, falling in a turning movement so that I could see where I was going? I worked out a certain pattern for the fall, sometimes with quick movements, sometimes slowed by his holding onto the railing, which allowed him to act his lines. He was game to try anything. While he was falling the devils were to tear off his white and golden robes as he tumbled down, having been smitten by God’s hand. And he landed at the bottom of the stairs in black and tattered costumes. I had also been asked to choreograph a small dance as the devils made their way from the bottom of the stairs to Hells Mouth, and this went down very well, but Martin Browne said that it was too good and would steal God’s thunder. So it was cut right down – this was my first experience of work being cut. I did the angel piece. Judy Dench was an angel, the first time placing a stool for Mary to sit in the play The Annunciation. The second time (1954) she was an angel of the Tomb, and she had a speech; and the third time (1957) she was the Virgin Mary, and she was lovely to work with. Her father played Caiaphas and her mother was the wardrobe mistress. But I found in the idea of doing all these things that I was going to have to do something with the crowd. I had never worked with 250 people before.

My experience of the choral movement did inform how I went about choreographing the crowd scenes. Of course it was much more stylised than it would be today – you can see that from the photographs. I absolutely loved handling the crowds, and the funny thing is that those people who studied choral movement with Laban never worked with crowds. His advice to me when working with large numbers of people was to break them down into smaller cells, each with their own leader – that way you would create separate bodies of movement. The Last Judgement was so exciting to do. It was the organisation of the saved and damned souls, as one group surged forward so another moved back: it was this sense of counter-movement which excited people so much. The devils were everywhere stopping the damned from escaping, and then chasing them into Hell. The people playing these souls took to it so well, they loved being frightened, as it were. It seemed that the devils would lift people up and thrown them into Hell’s Mouth. The saved souls were difficult because we had to figure out a way for them to walk up the steps to heaven without looking down to make sure they didn’t trip on their long skirts dresses, and of course we wanted them straight-backed looking upwards to heaven. They had to learn to how to walk with one hand holding the hem of the skirt and the other gesturing towards heaven. The first time we did it everyone wanted to be a devil.   

Of course I had plotted this all out on paper since it was my first time at choreographing such large numbers of people, and the Bradford students led everyone to their different places. I worked 6 weekends with them all. There were other set pieces scenes that I worked on such as the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus, etc. The movement style that I chose to pursue was in no way ‘Medieval’ – how could it be when we were performing on a fixed stage beside the old abbey and the plays would originally have been performed on pageant wagons? The great window arches of the Abbey were vast.

This was my first professional production, working with E. Martine Browne.  He was committed to creating a revival of English poetic drama and directed all of T.S. Eliot’s plays. But he wasn’t a movement man: he would simply sit in the auditorium with his wife and watch my work. He took no part in the choreography at all and had no idea of what I was going to prior to the rehearsals. He wouldn’t have understood my plans even if I had shown him them. He was only interested in the text. There was never any arguments between us – our working relationship was very good. I was sad that I was never invited to any of the press conferences.

Alls Well That Ends Well with Trevor Nunn

It all began when he rang me up to invite me to work with him. I don’t know who had recommended me, but he talked quite a while on the phone about what he wanted. So I went to Stratford on Avon and met with him and Guy Woolfenden (1937-2016), the RSC Director of music. I’ll never forget this meeting, it was one of the highlights of my experience in that Trevor started to talk about what he saw. He saw a party and wanted a waltz, indeed the poster already had a couple waltzing – so he was committed to the dance. He then left Guy and to sort the waltz. Harriet Walters had to choose her partner from five suitors. When Trevor returned the real process began and this was the most exciting moment because once I had thrown in an idea, Guy would suggest a tune, Trevor would suggest a move or line, and the whole process was so spontaneous, each of us playing off the other’s ideas. The creative excitement of it all was astonishing.

Later I did his film Lady Jane. He never came to see any of the rehearsals – he just trusted me to get on with the job. I choreographed this rather funny masque. He came in quite early in the morning and asked me to show him what we had created. We performed it and he sat in silence and afterwards asked to see it again, once again saying nothing. I was worried by the silence and asked him if it was alright. ‘Alright? It’s brilliant.’ And I’ve never worked with him since. Typical Trevor, typical director, in fact. 

Movement in general. Working with actors and dancers.

Would you say that a great part of your life has been spent creating a movement vocabulary for those who have none themselves?

Most certainly. Laban taught you how to observe people moving. Perhaps they should crawl here, walk tall there, dart across the space there. I love working with actors and helping them find the movement for their character, or teaching them to dance; the process of getting the movement out of them and through them. Some people can’t work with actors – they say they have two left feet, but I find they bring so much to it, once they’ve got the feel of it.   Working with dancers you can quickly get the steps, because they love doing the steps and the gestures, but they are a little empty. I need then to work on the dramatic content with them. The actors already have a feel for the dramatic content and intention. But I believe that this is what all dance should have: a sense of drama and a sense of intention. I don’t know whether you’ve seen the film Billy Elliott: the little boy in that is a natural dancer. You can have a Ballet dancer who has a phenomenal technique but who isn’t a dancer, she’s moving, but there’s no real content in it. Otherwise, to me, it’s boring.  Actors often have a great deal of content in their movement. Before Laban’s influence on me I had taken lessons in Classical Ballet from the age of 4 – 16 in Yorkshire. Even if it was Ballet I suppose that my dancing had some content: you’re dancing about something, not executing something technical.  You have to know what people are people are dancing about. Actors have the content but don’t always know how to move. Laban with his effort work as much as with his spatial exercises, are responsible for my interest in the content of movement, and for my being able to work with all these different types of people – the York  Plays, Pageants, actors – professional or amateur, and of course with dancers. Doing steps is not my strongest point because of course we learned very few steps with Laban; we working in the area of bodily expression.    

The Faerie Queen

One of my most interesting projects was this reconstruction of Henry Purcell’s great Masque. It was produced in San Carlos Opera House in Lisbon, with a director called David William, complete with a symphony orchestra, a troupe of actors, dancers and singers. I was sent out for two weeks before to work with the San Carlos Ballet Company before the main rehearsals began. The funny thing was that I didn’t want the ballerina because in this production there would be no ballet in it. So I worked for two weeks with this company and that was an achievement, to get them working on a 17thC style masque.  We had everyone on the opera-house stage – chorus, dancers, actors, all together. We had a huge finale when everyone was holding torches I think that’s one of the most exciting things that I have done.

Solo Dance Recitals in the late 1950s

But I was very happy with my solo dance recitals. In 1957 we did a poetry and dance recital. In fact these performances were a result of Laban’s suggestion.  I was finding the teaching getting all too heavy and I was getting stuck with it all, and he said that what I need to do was create a solo dance recital.  This was very typical of him. Once he’s said something he doesn’t help you. He just said, ‘Do eight or nine dances, and you can show one or two to me’. And there you are, you just have to do. I didn’t know where to get dances from.  And I lived off this for some while. I toured around small theatres and arts centres with a musician [John Dalby] and an actor: it was a small-scale touring circuit set up by the Arts Council. I used to perform at a lot of colleges where the students were all studying Laban at that time. It was very popular at these theatres, and I suppose it was good for them to see what Laban’s ideas could result in - to see these ideas achieved with solos. I was proud of this. People didn’t do this kind of thing, and I learned a lot through doing it. I got invited to dance on TV. I suppose I was one of the first of what you would independent dancers: in those days anything that wasn’t ballet was peculiar - it didn’t fit in.  Actually it did fit in to this touring circuit. One of our recitals was called On Choosing a Partner: it went through different historical periods, from the medieval to the Elizabethan and so through to the eighteenth and nineteenth century, with bits of prose or a poem and I would bring in some of my dance solos like Revolution (La vengeance, Madame Defarge, from A Tale of Two Cities) Gin Lane (from the Hogarth engraving) A Danse Macabre based on the medieval plague. I had been to a course in 1949 with Mary Wigman in Switzerland where I had learned a lot about macabre movement. I did different types of angels. I used to approach these recitals from these different angles. It was unique, quite unique. At the beginning there was no contemporary dance, whereas now there is so much – a great deal of which is fantastic, though other stuff I cannot understand where they are at. Maybe this is what people thought of my early recitals.

The very first one was at the Studio on July 14th 1948, to students and visitors. Then I extended to The Library Theatre, Manchester and that sold out. Laban and Lisa saw the first one, but Laban didn’t comment on it. Once he’d launched you and given you the tools to work with, he didn’t say anything after that.  Later I danced at The Park Lane Theatre in London, and this was a self-promotion. I did everything myself. It was packed out! They were standing.  Maybe there were 300 – 400 seats. I knew nothing about this business, but got about it. My agent, Richard Heller was worried. I just took it in hand because that seemed to be the thing to do. You just had to take the opportunity. At first my pieces were all performed to recorded music, but eventually a pianist and composer called John Dalby joined me.  

1979 Therese an opera by John Taverner.  

A huge and complex opera.  As you know Taverner’s music is very difficult music to listen to and I wanted to know what the piece sounded like.   Because I was going to be doing a lot of movement in this piece I asked the director David William if there was any chance of hearing any of the music. It finished with David and I going to Taverner’s house. So there he was with his long golden hair, wearing a white suit, sat at his piano which was also white, us sitting behind him, and he played the whole of the opera on the piano. And the entirety of this grim opera was played through his long, long back: each emotional twist was conveyed through his back. Some people play instruments, but his body was so expressive.

Vaclav Havel

The second thing I remember was to do with Vaclav Havel and a play I did of his which was called Temptation, a kind of modern Faust.  We had got to the first night at the Other place in Stratford, a relatively small space, and I was with the director Roger Michelle. This is quite unusual because usually once the first night comes no-one has any time for the choreographer, not the actors, or the musicians. This was because the Other Place didn’t have a place for VIPs (where I wouldn’t have been invited) but just a back room. So I went there in the interval and in came Roger with two ladies from Prague – Havel was under house arrest at the time. They spoke with Havel and he said that his flat was full of violets (the flowers were an important feature in the play). He asked to be rung after the end of the show, and to talk to the actor playing Faustus. It was a wonderful feeling connecting with this writer who had written this fascinating play, and who was currently was under house arrest.  It was really weird.  

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon

The next memory is about Stanley Kubrick.  I was phoned up and asked whether I would consider working on his film Barry Lyndon. I thought that it was a joke. It wasn’t. I was in the middle of doing a 13 episode television series on Edward VII and was working on episode 10, so I didn’t really mind whether I got the job or not given that I was so busy. They fly me out to Ireland on a Saturday to meet Kubrick in Dublin and then I was driven down to Waterford. I had a three hour meeting with him during which he asked me questions on every conceivable aspect of the eighteenth century. Including writing down a list of composers who were writing at the time: but with my music background I was OK on this question. I had to show him how to bow, how to courtesy, how to kiss someone’s hand. Would they do this, would they do that? I didn’t know whether I’d got the job and whether this was for information, or a job interview. I got the job and at that point the crew began to talk to me – something they hadn’t done before. Kubrick was extraordinary – these questions firing and firing at me. We got laughing a bit though he was a serious man. I needed to demonstrate certain dances and moves and used his very reluctant first assistant – much to Kubrick’s amusement. So that was the interview. Something I’d never had before nor experienced since.

I had to do an Irish dance and then a ballroom dance. I showed him a picture demonstrating the formal dance. “Oh, only four couples – that’ll be cheap!” To think how much money that man spends … Anyway, the ballroom dance was finally cut.  I had to work with Leonard Rossiter and teach him this dance off a video. But I really had no idea what I was going to do on the day. He was very bad with crowds – they were offal for him. Well it’s not how I work with crowds, so when I got to Waterford I begged to have an evening or two with the people who were all workers at the glass factory. Well I got my evening with them and it was wonderful. I said straight away that they must think it is crazy that an English woman should be coming over to teach them Irish jigs. I am not coming to do that. I’ve no idea what we’ll do. So I got them to show me some jigs, and got them to do a farandole, basically to get them to use space together and to get to know each other a bit. So on the day the whole hundred of them all of them were in this huge meadow with mountains in the background. As Rossiter and Gaye Hamilton were doing this very odd jig he wanted all the extras to stand in twos spread evenly throughout the meadow and of course at the end of the meadow they were knee deep in grass and could hardly move. But because we’d had that evening together we got on really well. You see you can’t take a whole bunch of people whom you haven’t worked with before and when you don’t know what you’re going to be doing. I always try to relate with people beforehand.  

I was one of the few people who have ever said no to Kubrick. He kept asking Rossiter to repeat his jig and I could see that if he did it once more, he would have a heart attack. I wouldn’t let them do it again. I can’t remember the other thing – something to do with the sun being in their eyes. I think he liked me for that. The cheek of me. The job is looking after the people who are dancing.  I think that you get the best out of people if you don’t impose on people. But it’s also for myself. I like to know who I’m working with – what my material is.  If you can remember a few names it works better all the way round.  

And it paid dividends because of course he didn’t give two hoots about them and how they might be feeling. And of course I could dart through the meadow like a scalded cat.  Whenever I work with new dancers I always like them to know where the canteen is, where the loos are, etc. This goes back to a time when I had been working at Alexendra Palace and had been left alone all day – without knowing where anything was. I had felt so lonely, so awful. I’d been there all day and wasn’t called until 6.00 in the evening.  

In Re-Joyce with Maureen Lipman.  

I adored working with her – she was wonderful to work with because she is so inventive, so willing. She and Edward Petherbridge are my favourite actors because they will just try. Some actors say that ‘They’d never do that’, but they don’t know until they try.  So, Maureen and I sailed along.  We had a few difficulties with the director. Then three days before we opened I had my fall and broke both my wrists and was in hospital. So I discharged myself and went to Farnham where we were opening: it was important to be there because Maureen likes a lot of support.  And being a one-woman show, the pianist was a man, the director was a man, so she need a woman’s company.

Working with David Giles in Television

Should I get testimonials from David Giles, Maureen Lipman and Edward Petherbridge?  David Giles was the director of the first historical television series in colour.  I’d just finished a job in Kenilworth and someone mentioned that Vanity Fair was going to be made into a series and that I should contact the director David Giles.  I had taught him at the Northern School of Theatre in Bradford, so, for the first time, I broke my rule about not using old students.  So I wrote to David and asked him if he would bear me in mind. Within in three days he phoned and said, ‘Thank God you’ve written in, I didn’t have a clue to who was going to do the choreography’. Since that was the period when these huge historical pieces were being made, this was the beginning of a lot of work for me.