Born in Trinidad to Chinese parents, Dai Ailian came to London in 1930 and studied ballet with Marie Rambert and Anton Dolin. Dai Ailian went on to study with Kurt Jooss and Sigurd Leeder at Dartington Hall where she met the sculptor Willi Soukop. During the 2nd World War Dai Ailian travelled to China where she met and married her first husband - the artist Ye Chien Yu - in 1942. Dai Ailian was interested in discovering traditional Chinese folk dance but also taught ballet and became the guiding force in China's national ballet institutions. During the cultural revolution Dai Ailian was banished to the countryside and forced to do hard labour while everything she had built up was destroyed along with her own personal possessions. However Dai Ailian remained strong and when the revolution ended she was able to resume her activities and was reinstated as director of the Central Ballet of China, and later artistic advisor. Her influence and connections with the wider ballet world ensured the success of the company and she was a dedicated ambassador for dance in China. In 1993, Dai Ailian visited RAD headquarters with a view to introducing the RAD syllabus to China.
The Dancing Times, first published in 1894 as the house magazine of the Cavendish Rooms, London, a ballroom dancing establishment, was the oldest monthly devoted to dancing. It was bought in 1910 by P. J. S. Richardson and T. M. Middleton and transformed into a national periodical, covering all forms of dancing, and reporting worldwide. Richardson was a British writer on dancing and was the editor of the Dancing Times from 1910 until 1958 when he was succeeded by A H Franks, but remained president until his death in 1963. Franks split off the ballroom section of the magazine into a second periodical, the Ballroom Dancing Times, and in 1962 doubled the format of the Dancing Times to its present size of A4. Franks died suddenly in 1963 and Mary Clarke, then assistant editor, became editor. In 2015 the ballroom and social dance magazine, by then given the title Dance Today, was reintegrated into the pages of the Dancing Times so that the magazine again covered all aspects of dance. Clarke retired from the editorship in 2008 and was succeeded by Jonathan Gray who continued its original stated policy to maintain the highest standards of criticism and illustration, give voice to leading authorities, encourage high standards of teaching, encourage awareness of dance history and stress the importance of dance in education.
For more than 110 years Dancing Times remained the leader in its field, sustained by loyal readers and advertisers alike. Unfortunately changing financial conditions, the global pandemic of 2020, and changing patterns of readership led to the magazine closing, and the final issue of the Dancing Times was published in September 2022. During its years of publication, the Dancing Times amassed a collection of photographic images representing all the aspects of dance covered by the magazine. Some of the earlier material was lost during World War II, but a significant library remains. Due to the breadth of coverage, the image library constitutes an important and valuable academic and historical resource, offering a range of images unlikely to be found in any existing single image collection.
Husband of Anna Pavlova and manager of her dance school. Prior to meeting Pavlova he was a member of the Saint Petersburg City Duma. From 1938, he managed Colonel De Basil's Ballet Russes.