Kathleen Dillon

Kathleen Dillon (1898-1990) was a British dancer and theatre designer. Life and work Kathleen Dillon was born in Croydon in 1898. Her parents were Horace Robert Linn Dillon and Mary Ann Dillon (née House). Kathleen’s parents had wanted her to be a teacher but she rebelled against this decision at an early age and persuaded her mother to answer an advertisement in The Stage for child dancers. In May 1911 she was chosen by Margaret Morris and John Galsworthy as one of six children to dance in Galsworthy's play The Little Dream, with dances choreographed by Morris. Morris described the thirteen year-old as "tall and slender, with a very fair skin, and pale golden hair that hung to her shoulders; she was a serious child – devoted to her dancing – she seldom smiled, and had large, thoughtful eyes, but her full curling lips held a promise of sensuality not yet awakened." Dillon was trained in Morris's dance technique, which focused on natural, expressionistic movement with bare feet and loose clothing, in contrast to classical ballet. Dillon inspired Galsworthy to write the ballet Spring and the Four Winds, which was first performed in 1913 with Dillon in the role of Spring. Kathleen continued to perform as one of Morris's 'Dancing Children' at Morris's club, theatre and school in Chelsea, London. She moved in with Morris and her mother and began teaching at the school. Dillon also performed with other small theatres in Chelsea, including the Greenleaf Theatre, run by Maxwell Armstrong and Constance Smedley, and the Choric School (or Clarissa Club), which she founded with Hester Sainsbury and the poet John Rodker. In May 1917 Dillon danced in the first English performance of Stravinsky's Pastorale, choreographed by Morris, at the Margaret Morris Club. Dillon's striking Pre-Raphaelite looks inspired artists such as J.D. Fergusson, Augustus John and Maurice Lambert. Fergusson's 1916 work Rose Rhythm was inspired by a hat Dillon had made which "was not merely a hat, but a continuation of the girl’s character, her mouth, her nostril, the curl of her hair – her whole character – (feeling of her) like Burns’s ‘love is like a red red rose."