Dancing Times Magazine May 2015 Back Issue

We pay tribute this month to Mary Clarke, our beloved editor emeritus, who, you may already have heard, sadly died on March 20 at the age of 91. Astonishingly, Mary had an association with Dancing Times stretching back over 70 years, when her very fi rst article for this magazine was published by our founder editor, Philip Richardson, in December 1943. She went on to become the editor of both Dancing Times and Ballroom Dancing Times (now Dance Today), and was a director of the company until 2013. For many people, Mary simply was the Dancing Times. It has been wonderful to see her remembered in the pages of The Guardian, for which she was dance critic for 17 years, as well as The Times and the Daily Telegraph and also on Radio 4’s Last Word programme broadcast on April 10 (which can still be heard on the BBC iPlayer). In addition, The Royal Ballet dedicated the first night of its revival of La Fille mal gardée on April 16 to Mary’s memory (it was a ballet she loved), and Rambert will be doing the same on the opening night of its Sadler’s Wells season on May 12. Being a very private person, Mary would have been surprised by these tributes to her, but I hope she would also have been pleased.