David Vaughan

David Vaughan (May 17, 1924 – October 27, 2017) was a dance archivist, historian and critic. He was the archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1976 until the company was disbanded in 2012. In his long career, Vaughan was a dancer, choreographer, actor and singer whose work had been seen in London, Paris, and in New York, both on- and off-Broadway, as well as in regional theatres across the United States, in cabarets, on television and on film. Vaughan's ballet choreography was used in Stanley Kubrick's 1955 film Killer's Kiss, danced by Kubrick's wife at the time, ballerina Ruth Sobotka. He has worked with both modern dance and ballet companies. Life and career Vaughan was born in London, to Albert, who was the secretary of the British Linoleum Manufacturers’ Association, and Ada Rose (née Starks). He studied at Oxford, but did not begin dance training until he was 23 years old. At the age of 26, in 1950, Vaughan came to the New York City from London on a scholarship to study at the School of American Ballet, where he first met Merce Cunningham, who briefly taught there. Vaughan began studying with Cunningham in the mid-1950s, and became the company's paid secretary when Cunningham opened his own studio, after which he served in various staff capacities with Cunningham. He began to collect dance artifacts in the late 1950s, leading to an interest in collecting documentation to make a chronology of Cunningham's works. This resulted in his being formally made the company's archivist in 1976, assisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was the first in-house archivist for an American dance company. He held this position until the disbanding of the Merce Cunningham Company in 2012, after Cunningham's death in 2009. The Cunningham archive was then donated to the dance collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.