From Alastair Macaulay

By Alastair Macaulay
November 18, 2019

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Valerie Taylor Barnes died on Sunday 17 morning. Her bright eyes, bright smile, ready laughter, and engaging warmth of manner have been haunting me happily ever since. She joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1948, went on all its first historic tours of North America, became a friend of both Margot Fonteyn and Frederick Ashton, and danced in Ashton premieres from “Cinderella” (1948 - “I was a pageboy”) to “The Two Pigeons” (1961 - I was a gypsy”). Since history has generally been dismissive of Ashton’s “Tiresias” (1951), she used to laugh as she related that she and her friends especially enjoyed their roles in that, whereas she thought “Pigeons” was really not one of Ashton’s best until she saw it from the audience.

She was heightsick, so always dreaded her entrance in Ashton’s “Sylvia”: she was one of the eight companions who, with Sylvia, first appear by crossing a bridge above the stage. She loved to recall how Fonteyn, knowing her heightsickness, would make her giggle by standing with her hunting bugle to her lips before that entrance and say “Tally-ho, Taylor! Tally-ho!” And she was in many historic productions: when George Balanchine first staged “Ballet Imperial” In 1950 for the Sadler’s Wells company at Covent Garden, she was the second woman onstage in the finale, following her friend Julia Farron. “And there was so much to learn from the way Julia used her eyes and feet.” The two women kept in touch over the subsequent decades: Julia died in July, Valerie four months later.

She danced leading roles. When she made her debut as Miller’s Wife in Leonide Massine’s “The Three-Cornered Hat” (“Le Tricorne”), the conductor Robert Irving particularly arranged that he would conduct that performance. That was the kind of loyalty and affection she inspired.

A career in teaching led her to America. She and the critic Clive Barnes had had very parallel careers: his first “Cinderella” was her first one too, but on different sides of the footlights. I had met him long before; when I first met her, in 2007, she was now his fourth wife. They made a very cheerful and devoted duo, passionate about performances, affable to colleagues, enjoying tales about people in the performing arts and journalism. In summer 2008, I took them both out to lunch: we laughed and gossiped and laughed and confided. Afterwards, we planned to do it again: this time it would be Clive’s treat. Alas, he died only a few months later.

My friendship with Valerie continued: she was full of history, and I was full of questions. Now I can hear her voice, those frank opinions and that wonderful mixture of impulsiveness, irreverence, and enthusiasm. The affection she had for such dancers as Paloma Herrera and Isabella Boylston, the encouragement she gave to Gemma Bond, the devotion she had to Craig Wright, the energy she gave to the Clive Barnes awards: these showed the texture of her life, as did her transatlantic phonecalls to her old friend from 1948, Julia Farron. I wish I had known Valerie even better, had recorded the long interview with her we meant to record, and had profited yet more from her good company.