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Clive Barnes

Published Monday 24 November 2008 at 17:05 by John Percival and Brian Attwood

For Broadway to dim its lights in tribute to a newly deceased critic indicates a very special person. And that’s what Clive Barnes was - the best-known and most admired critic of dance and drama on both sides of the Atlantic.

At age 81 he was still writing regularly, besides The Stage, for the New York Post and Dance Magazine in Manhattan, for Ballet2000 in Italy and France, and for the London quarterly Dance Now.

He went to every possible performance, including cast changes, and wrote vividly about their merits - or lack thereof.

No wonder that besides many formal obituaries, his writings have been the subject of numerous website submissions from readers who declared how much their own knowledge and opinions depended upon him.

He had been at this for 60 years, never confining himself to famous subjects - his last column at the beginning of this month, as he entered hospital with cancer, drew attention to two new dancers with American Ballet Theatre.

Born in London on May 13, 1927, Barnes was educated at Emanuel School, Wimbledon, then at King’s College, London, briefly studying medicine to become a psychiatrist. In 1946 he was called up into the Royal Air Force, where he spent time preparing psychological tests, assisting in adult education and playing rugby football. On demobilisation in 1948 he abandoned all medical aspirations, partly because he had found that the sight of blood made him faint, and instead went to Saint Catherine’s College, Oxford, to study English Language and Literature, graduating in 1951.

He planned to be a critic of drama and dance. His divorced mother (remarriage to her ambulance driver husband fell through because he died in an accident), as secretary to a theatrical agent first took her son to the theatre in 1937 - he became a regular gallery-goer during the London blitz.

Initially he went only to drama, but during the war, the New Theatre (now the Noel Coward), served the Old Vic company headed by Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, the Sadler’s Wells Opera and Sadler’s Wells Ballet, so his interests widened.

Barnes first wrote about ballet in 1949 for the Oxford University magazine Isis.

In 1950 he co-edited a revival of the OU Ballet Club’s wartime magazine, Arabesque, and that same year became a contributor to the newly-founded magazine Dance and Dancers.

He remained associated with this in various editorial capacities until its last issue in 1998, and from 1960-65 was executive editor of its sister magazines Plays and Players and Music and Musicians.

Graduating in 1951, Barnes supported self and family for nearly nine years as an administrative officer in the London County Council’s town planning section, while maintaining a freelance career writing about the arts. He became at times dance critic of the New Statesman and The Spectator and, more important, from 1962-65, the first ever dance critic of The Times - a post hitherto filled by the chief music critic.

He also completed his first book - arguably his most interesting and original - Ballet in Britain Since the War, published in 1953.

In 1956 he began an association with the Daily Express which ended only when he emigrated to the United States - he became a television critic beside covering film, drama, music and dance.

Even before moving to America, he wrote for several magazines there, and from 1963 contributed to the arts pages of the New York Times.

In 1965 that paper asked him to move to the USA with his family to become its chief dance critic, and in 1967 he was appointed also its chief drama critic. For 11 years he broadcast a daily radio commentary on WQXR.

In 1977, at the personal invitation of Rupert Murdoch, Barnes moved to the New York Post, again as dance and drama critic. He was also a monthly columnist, reviewer and senior consulting editor of Dance Magazine, annually hosting its Awards.

Barnes lectured widely across the USA, also frequently on the liner Queen Elizabeth II, and appeared often on television. In the sixties and seventies he was an adjunct professor teaching critical writing at New York University, he also conducted a university seminar on The Artist and the Critic.

Short and stocky in build, Barnes was amusing and friendly. His writing was both witty and fearless. He was made a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog (Denmark) in 1972 and was appointed CBE in 1975 for services to British theatre.

His books include Frederick Ashton and his Ballets (1961), Dance Scene USA (1967), Inside American Ballet Theatre (1977) and Nureyev (1982). He also edited Best American Plays series Six, Seven and Eight.

He was married - and divorced - three times, to Joyce Tolman in 1946, Patricia Winckley, (with whom he had two children) in 1958 and Amy Pagnozzi in 1985. In 2004 he married the former dancer Valerie Taylor. He died on November 19.

John Percival

Brian Attwood, Stage editor writes:

“Legendary is an over-used phrase, but Clive was one journalist who merited the description. Despite his status he remained the most uncomplaining and unaffected of contributors. Clive was also remarkably good company, with an enthusiasm for his work and life in general that made no concession to advancing age. He is much missed.”

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