David Vaughan (dance archivist)

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-[2] and off-Broadway,[3] as well as in regional theatres across the United States, in cabarets, on television and on film.

[7] Vaughan was born in London, to Albert, who was the secretary of the British Linoleum Manufacturers’ Association, and Ada Rose (née Starks).

[1] 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.

[1] The Cunningham archive was then donated to the dance collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

[1] At Cunningham's suggestion, Vaughan coordinated the Cunningham Company's 1964 six-month world tour to Europe and Asia, with composer John Cage serving as music director, and artist Robert Rauschenberg as resident designer and stage manager, a tour which greatly enhanced the company's reputation in the dance world.

[1] In 1988, after The Rockettes hired their first black dancer, Vaughan wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times criticizing major ballet companies for falling behind other types of cultural organizations in giving artists of color regular opportunities to perform because of long-held ideas about the need for uniformity among dancers on stage.

In 1968, he performed a duet with Nancy Zala for the James Waring Dance Company, which provoked critic Clive Barnes to call Vaughan "possibly the finest bad singer in the country".

[9] As an author, Vaughan wrote Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years,[13] – which Jennifer Dunning called "as complete and clear a portrait of the modern dance choreographer and his epochal work as has ever been published"[1] – Frederick Ashton and His Ballets,[14] and was the co-editor with Mary Clarke of The Encyclopedia of Dance and Ballet.