Lyndon Wainwright
Professional ballroom dancer who, in the 1950s, popularised Latin American dance forms in Britain
LYNDON WAINWRIGHT, who has died aged 98, began his career before the Second World War as a metrologist, dealing with precision measurement of engineering components; but after the war he developed a passion for dancing into a career as an exhibition ballroom dancer and teacher.
In the 1950s he and his first wife and dancing partner, Felicia, travelled the country to give demonstrations and were credited with popularising Latin American dance forms such as Blues, Mambo and the Mexican Jarabe. It was estimated that nearly one million people saw them in person, while on television they appeared on the BBC show Casa de Salta with the Edmundo Ros Orchestra, and on Victor Silvester’s BBC Dancing Club.
At their peak, “Lyndon & Felicia” were presenting more than 400 shows a year. They also ran dance studios in Kingston and Surbiton and, for a year, were engaged to perform every alternate Dancers’ Night at the Hammersmith Palais. They were reckoned to be one of the highest paid ballroom dancing duos of the time. Later Wainwright published numerous articles and books about his passion.
Lyndon Bentley Wainwright was born at Scarborough on December 7 1919. His father was a hairdresser and his mother an agent for a corsetry firm. In his memoir, Blowin’
in the Wind (2012), Wainwright would recall charabanc outings to the countryside, and the Scottish fishing boats which would come into harbour to unload their catch of herring, with the fishwives who would gut the fish and pack them in barrels of salt. When a whale washed up on the beach, Scarborough Corporation erected a tent over it and charged for entry.
Young Lyndon’s parents were keen ballroom dancers and had once won a local waltz competition. His older sister Valerie would train at the Italia Conti School in London. Lyndon took his first steps in public as part of the Morris dancing team at Scarborough High School for Boys, where he also captained the first XI. In his teens he took ballroom dancing lessons.
After leaving school he worked briefly for an estate agent and in 1938, after learning some magic tricks, joined the British Ring of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, developing an act under the name Ray Lyndon.
One day he answered an advertisement for assistants, grade III, for the Department of Science and Technology, and was taken on at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, working in the metrology division on the measurement of engineering components involved in the inspection of munitions gauges. As this was a reserved occupation, he was exempted from military service during the war.
He pursued his hobby of ballroom dancing in his spare time, and in 1943 he married Felicia Heslop, with whom he performed his first paid-for show at Slater’s restaurant in Kensington, dancing the tango, waltz, slow foxtrot and quickstep, with rumba as an encore, for a fee of three guineas. The Latin numbers were so popular that they went on to develop a routine featuring tango, samba, blues and rumba with an encore of paso doble. On VE night they performed at the RAC club in Pall Mall. In 1948 they won the Premier Prix at the World’s Professional Eight Dance Ballroom championship in Paris.
Before they got married, however, Felicia had explained that she was repulsed by sex, so, as Wainwright explained in his memoir, the marriage was never consummated. When, after 16 years, he began an affair and Felicia found out, they split up and Felicia later initiated divorce proceedings on the grounds of his adultery.
The break-up of their marriage brought an end to Wainwright’s career as an exhibition dancer and he returned to metrology, working at the National Engineering Laboratory in East Kilbride, Scotland, for four years, and then for seven years as head of quality control and metrology at PIRA, the Printing Industry Research Association, in Leatherhead. He was chairman of the English Metrology Association from 1967 to 1972.
Later he returned to the dance world as a teacher, writer and administrator, serving in various offices of the International Dance Teachers Association (IDTA), on the British Dance Council, the Council for Dance Education and Training, and the Central Council of Physical Recreation. A brisk merengue, he claimed, “would burn off around 400 calories an hour and a spirited lindy hop up to 700”. He published articles in dance magazines and wrote nine books. He also published articles on metrology.
On Christmas Eve 2007 he appeared in the BBC documentary Last Man at the Palais, about the history of the Hammersmith Palais, dancing a waltz with Lynda King. In 2012 he was interviewed by Len Goodman for his BBC programme
Len Goodman’s Dancing Feet: the British Ballroom Story.
In 1996 and 1999 he received the Carl Alan Award; in 1998 the Classique de Danse; in 2000 the President’s Award of the Ballroom Dancers’ Federation, and in 2005 the Distinguished Service Award of the IDTA.
His second marriage, to Isobel Scott, also ended in divorce. His third wife, Yvonne, whom he married in 1973, predeceased him. He is survived by a son from his second marriage.