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A doctor turned on a radio
The Diagnosis
Her homework was always late, and she disturbed the people around her. Her mother took her to a specialist in an oak-paneled room, where Gillian sat on her hands for 20 minutes while the man listened to a list of her problems at school.
The Radio Test
Then he sat down next to her, said he needed to speak to her mother privately, and left her alone in the room. As they walked out, he switched on the radio on his desk. In the hallway, he told her mother to stand and watch. The minute the door closed, Gillian was on her feet, moving to the music.
He turned to Mrs. Lynne and told her that Gillian wasn't sick: she was a dancer, and she should go to a dance school. The first class Gillian walked into was full of people like her, people who couldn't sit still and had to move to think.
Her Career
She auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, became a soloist, and had a long career at the Royal Ballet. She founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company and met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She went on to choreograph Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, two of the most successful musical theater productions in history, and became a multimillionaire.
How did Lynne's famous musicals reach the stage?
Cats opened in London's West End in 1981, built on T. S. Eliot's book of poems Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lynne's choreography carried the show, since the cast told its story largely through movement. The Phantom of the Opera followed in 1986, again with Lloyd Webber's music and Lynne as choreographer. Both productions went on to run for decades in London and on Broadway.
Why did a fidgeting child get labeled disordered in the 1930s?
Schools of that era expected children to sit still and attend quietly for long stretches, and a child who could not was easy to flag as a problem. Medical interest in restless, inattentive children was already growing: the pediatrician Charles Bradley published a study in 1937 on children with behavior problems at a Rhode Island home. The label attention deficit disorder did not enter the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual until 1980. Before that, descriptions varied from doctor to doctor and school to school.
What made the Royal Ballet School so selective?
The school grew out of the company founded by Ninette de Valois in the 1920s, which became the Royal Ballet. It trains students in classical technique from a young age, and places are awarded by audition. Its graduates have gone on to dance with companies around the world. It received a royal charter in 1956, which gave the company and school the royal name.
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