The Stage

Dance UK founder Gill Clarke dies

Published Friday 18 November 2011 at 15:33 by Michael Quinn

The dancer, teacher and co-founder of Dance UK, Gill Clarke, has died after a long battle with cancer on November 15 at the age of 56.

Gill Clarke Photo: Peter Slade

Earlier this year, she received the Jane Attenborough Dance UK Industry Award at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards in recognition of her championing of independent dance artists.

She had been closely involved with Dance UK since its formation in 1982. She was also a founder member of the Siobhan Davies Dance Company and went on to work with a broad range of choreographers, including Janet Smith, Rosemary Butcher and Rosemary Lee.

Describing her as “irreplaceable”, Davies paid tribute to Clarke as someone who “loved dance with an intelligent passion. She intuitively appreciated that there is a knowing in our bodies that too often we are not in touch with. Her lifelong work as a performer, teacher and researcher was to reveal the mindful intelligence of the moving body and what that means to all of us as people, our relationship with others and our place in the world.”“

From 2000 to 2006, she was head of performance studies at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and developed a new MA in Creative Practice in partnership with Davies, aimed at dancers in mid career. She contributed widely to cross-genre collaborations, working closely with the Southbank, Barbican and Serpentine galleries.

Caroline Miller, director of Dance UK, said: “She died as she lived, calmly and with great poise. Independent dance has lost a wonderful director and inspiring artist. Gill will be greatly missed.”