Alastair Macaulay is an English-born writer, critic, and historian of the performing arts. He was the chief dance critic for The New York Times from 2007 until his retirement in 2018. He was also previously chief dance critic at The Times and The Times Literary Supplement and chief theater critic of the Financial Times, both of London. He founded the British quarterly Dance Theater Journal in 1983. In addition to his roles as critic, Macaulay has written for The New Yorker and also published a biography on Margot Fonteyn. In 2000, he wrote Matthew Bourne and His Adventures in Dance: Conversations with Alastair Macaulay with Matthew Bourne. Macaulay was named one of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Jerome Robbins Dance Division Fellows in 2017. As of 2019, Macaulay was an instructor at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.