Sir Tim Rice (b. 1944) will always be inextricably known as Andrew Lloyd Webber's original - and best - lyricist. They met in 1965 and promptly wrote a musical - The Likes of Us - which has never been professionally staged. Of the three which have been, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat turned 41 this year. After Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, lyricist and composer parted company when Lloyd Webber started working with T S Eliot. In 1984 Rice went on to collaborate with the male half of Abba on Chess.

In dance heaven, poor Agnes de Mille is resigned to being jostled by nobler colleagues. "Sprightly but peripheral" was her own assessment of her work, yet, with her 1942 ballet Rodeo and her musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, Brigadoon and more, she invented a genre of popular stage dance that came to dominate the Western public's theatre-going for half the century.