AS most Rewind readers will be aware, the Swindon area has long punched well above its weight in terms of producing notable people.

In mid-July of 1980 we ran our first story about a young man who would win fans among ballet audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

We said: “It takes a mighty leap to jump from football into ballet, but David Sadler has covered the distance with ease.

“For David, 15, a fanatical supporter of Swindon Town, is also set on a career as a ballet dancer, and has been accepted as a pupil of Ballet Rambert, one of Britain’s top ballet schools.

“All he is waiting for now is a grant from Wiltshire County Council. And while he waits, David, who has just left Headlands School, trains and practices every day at Thamesdown’s dance studio at the Town Hall.

“David, of Liddington Street, Pinehurst, used to play minor league football for Walcot and was in the Swindon under-13 boys’ squad.

“He played for Pinehurst School, senior and junior, before moving on to Headlands and taking up ballet.”

He had begun by training in tap with Marie McCluskey, a keystone of the Swindon dance world who retired only last year, and whose work helped countless young people achieve their show business ambitions.

David told us he loved football, but added: “There’s only one thing that comes before football – dancing.

“If I’ve got a show or rehearsals then I don’t go.

“I like classical ballet. I like performances at the theatre. I like the music and I like the stories.”

We next caught up with David six years later, by which time he was very much a rising star, and had landed contracts with two prestigious American dance companies.

One was the Empire State Ballet in Buffalo, New York, and the other the Ballet Metropolitan in Columbus, Ohio.

Following Ballet Rambert, he had joined the Central School of Ballet and later spent two years studying his craft in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The trip to America was not his first; by 1986, although still only 21 years old, he had already worked at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Garden State Ballet Company in New Jersey, as well as training at the Juillard School in New York’s Lincoln Centre.

The final cuttings about David in our archive date from 1992, when we reported him as living in Canada with his wife, Jeanne, and still working as a ballet dancer.