A conversation Mary Clarke, former editor of Dancing Times. It is thanks to her godson, Jerome Monahan, that we have this evocative and informative interview with Mary Clarke. Writer extraordinaire on all aspects of ballet, she hated the sound of her own voice and even more the look of her transcript. In these few minutes, however, she manages to convey the feeling of several eras, and of many people and happenings. She also explains, in her low-key erudite way, how the word ‘balletomane’ entered the English language. Mary is interviewed by her friend, the former Royal Ballet soloist Meryl Chappell, and the interview is introduced by Jonathan Gray, former editor of Dancing Times, who worked closely with Mary during her later years.

Mary Clarke was the dance historian and writer par excellence. Her two books on the birth of British ballet in the 20th Century - The Sadler’s Wells Ballet: A History and Appreciation (London, 1955) and Dancers of Mercury: The Story of Ballet Rambert (London, 1962) - remain the starting point for all future historians of ballet in the UK.

Mary Clarke was born in London in 1923. After her schooling at Mary Datchelor School, she worked as a typist at Reuter’s Press Agency. She was a youthful enthusiast for ballet and all things theatrical, and her career as a ballet critic and journalist began in 1943 with her first published article (prophetically for Dancing Times) and with her appointment in the same year as London correspondent for the American Dance Magazine. After the end of the war Clarke wrote for the London-based Ballet Today magazine. From the mid-1950s until 1970 she was also the London correspondent for Dance News, another American publication, which was then run by the distinguished critic and writer Anatole Chujoy. In 1954 Clarke became the assistant editor of Dancing Times, first under Philip Richardson and then for Arthur Franks. On Franks’ sudden death in 1963, Clarke became editor of Dancing Times, a post she held until her retirement in 2010. For over half a century she chronicled the changing trends in ballet and dance worldwide and their effects with impeccable judgement and an encyclopaedic knowledge.

Clarke was dance critic for The Guardian newspaper from 1977 to 1994 and associate editor (with Arnold L Haskell) for many years of the Ballet Annual. She co-authored a range of books with the ballet critic and writer, Clement Crisp, notably Ballet: An Illustrated History (London, 1973) and The Encyclopaedia of Dance and Ballet (London, 1977) with David Vaughan. Her quiet demeanour and straightforward style belied deep thought and high ambition for the art. Her contributions to A Dictionary of Modern Ballet (London, 1959) are awe-inspiring in their clarity and humanity, qualities rare in a critic. She was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award of the Royal Academy of Dance in 1990, Poland’s Nijinsky Medal in 1996, and she was made a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog in 1992. Mary Clarke died in 2015.

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