DANCERS and dance teachers from all over the world will converge on Bradford's Alhambra Theatre this Saturday to pay tribute to an influential head of an Ilkley dance school.

Margaret Allenby-Jaffé, 85, recently retired as principal of the Ilkley Dance Centre after 60 years of teaching young performers. Her past pupils include renowned ballet teacher David Gayle MBE, founder of once Ilkley-based Yorkshire Ballet Seminars, and first co-ordinator of the Royal Ballet Summer School.

Mr Gayle will be one of the guests of honour at the Gala Celebration of Dance, at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford, on Saturday. He is said to be looking forward to paying his own special tribute to the very special lady'.

Mrs Jaffé, who lives in Skipton, has sent thousands of pupils on their way to successful careers in many top international ballet companies, popular touring stage productions and even performing in Las Vegas and at famous Paris cabaret club the Lido.

Guests and friends, many of whom have been taught by Mrs Jaffé, and gone on to perform and teach themselves, are expected to attend the gala at the Alhambra.

Mrs Jaffé is looking forward to being re-united with ex-pupils now living in New Zealand, the Netherlands, and other parts of the world.

She said she recently met up with a former pupil whom she had not seen since the 1940s, a girl from one of her first dance classes. But in the world of dance and theatre, she finds many people do know each other.

"I always tell my young dancers, you'd better behave yourself because everyone will know about it," she joked.

More than 60 years ago, the Dixon-Phillip Stage School opened in Grassington, offering music and dance lessons. Branches soon spread to neighbouring communities and took over an established school in Bradford in 1960, the Braybrooks Academy.

The various theatrical branches were drawn together under the name of Northern Dance Centre, and the Ilkley Dance Centre soon followed. Classes today take place in Operatic House on Leeds Road, at St Mary's Parish Centre in Burley-in-Wharfedale.

She has personally taught many thousands of children and older students to dance. Her very careful classical training is credited with giving young dancers a sound background which proved to be invaluable in their chosen careers of ballet, musicals, choreography, teaching, or touring in international shows.

Mrs Jaffé has also written books on folk dancing and world dance. Her interested in this was said to be started when she - then Margaret Phillip - and a group of young dancers and singers performed for Allied troops station around Yorkshire during the Second World War.

Mrs Jaffé's very careful classical training is credited with giving young dancers a sound background which proved to be invaluable in their chosen careers of ballet, musicals, choreography, teaching, or touring in international shows.

Ilkley's Amy Addison, 35, a former pupil of Mrs Jaffé, is the new director of Ilkley Dance Centre She admits it is not an easy task stepping into Mrs Jaffé's shoes as the new director.

"It's daunting," she said. "There's so much that's gone before, and she'd built up such an incredible reputation for the school. It's a small world and everybody's close, it will take a long time to fill her shoes."