Pauline Clayden, Last Surviving Soloist of Sadler's Wells' Landmark 1949 New York Debut, Dies at 103
The British ballerina danced the Fairy of the Songbirds on the opening night that introduced American audiences to the company now known as The Royal Ballet.
Pauline Clayden, the British ballerina who was the last known surviving soloist from the opening night of Sadler's Wells Ballet's The Sleeping Beauty at the Metropolitan Opera House on Oct. 9, 1949 - a performance widely credited with altering the course of American dance - died on July 21 in Salisbury, England, The New York Times reports. She was 103.
That 1949 engagement launched the company's first U.S. tour and proved a turning point on both sides of the Atlantic. Sadler's Wells, which was renamed The Royal Ballet in 1956, arrived with a combination of vivid dramatic acting and radiant classical technique that set a new standard for American companies. Margot Fonteyn, then 30, was hailed in the press as "a ballerina among ballerinas," but the ensemble around her drew equal notice. Clayden danced the Fairy of the Songbirds, one of the fairy godmothers in the Prologue, with an ebullient solo.
Dancers at New York City Ballet, then just a year old, and American Ballet Theatre, founded in 1939, took direct inspiration from the visitors. Sadler's Wells went on to become the most popular international ballet company touring the United States, returning for months-long engagements through the 1950s and '60s. Clayden took part in the first four of those tours.
Born Pauline Elsie Clayden on Oct. 12, 1922, in Lewisham, southeast London, she trained locally before joining the opera ballet at the Royal Opera House in 1939, where the young Antony Tudor was choreographer. She danced with London Ballet during the Blitz, then joined Sadler's Wells in 1942.
Between 1946 and 1955 she created supporting roles in seven Frederick Ashton premieres, among them "Scènes de Ballet" (1948). Ashton, who rarely praised substitutes for Fonteyn, made an exception for Clayden's Chloë in "Daphnis and Chloë" (1951), and in 1956 wrote that her Giselle was among the best he had ever seen.
Clayden left the company in 1956 to raise a family, later teaching in Purley and returning to The Royal Ballet to coach Ashton roles including those in "Nocturne," "Daphnis and Chloë" and "Homage to the Queen." Her husband, Howard John Gamble, a professor of neuroanatomy whom she married in 1948, died in 1999. She is survived by their two children, Amanda Fisher and Roger Gamble; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
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