Simone Clarke

Simone Clarke (born 1970 in Leeds, Yorkshire) is an English ballerina and former Prima Ballerina of English National Ballet company. In 2006, she was the centre of controversy when it was revealed that she was a member of the British National Party. She retired from professional dance in 2007 and opened her own school, the Yorkshire Ballet Academy,[1] in Leeds in 2008.

Career

Clarke trained at the Royal Ballet School (1981–1988) and then joined the Birmingham Royal Ballet where she was promoted to the first soloist in 1995. In 1998 she joined the English National Ballet. During the company's tour of China in 2000 she performed the role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake as a guest dancer, and became senior soloist in that year. In 2003 she advanced to principal dancer. She has performed as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and as Cinderella and as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty.

Clarke was the Equity trade union "dance representative" for the London region[2] and, from November 2007, also an Executive member of the BNP-linked trade union Solidarity.[1]

BNP membership

In an undercover investigation, The Guardian newspaper reported on 21 December 2006 that Simone Clarke was a member of the far-right British National Party.[3] Clarke, in response to the British media's coverage of this, defended her personal political affiliation, stating that "the BNP is the only party to take a stand against immigration".[4] She faced calls to be sacked from the English National Ballet by the campaign group Unite Against Fascism who believed it was inappropriate for a potential role model in a far-right party to be funded with public money.[4] The Guardian later reported that Clarke said she had received "nearly 300 emails supporting me" since her membership became public.[5]

On 12 January 2007, around forty people staged a protest outside the London Coliseum theatre, where Clarke was to perform that night playing the lead in the romantic classic Giselle in her first performance since The Guardian reported on her BNP membership.[6] A counter-protest group was led by her then partner Richard Barnbrook, the BNP local councillor for the London constituency of Barking.

Private life

Clarke was the girlfriend of Yat-Sen Chang, an ENB dancer of Cuban-Chinese descent, with whom she has a daughter.

On 19 December 2007, it was announced she planned to marry BNP councillor Richard Barnbrook, whom she had been seeing for more than nine months.[7] In statements made before he met Clarke, however, Barnbrook was quoted as saying, apropos her relationship with Chang, "I'm not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people." He has since said that should he and the ballerina wed, "her child will be my child."[7] However, in an interview with The Times in November 2008, he claimed that they were no longer engaged.[8]

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References
  1. "Leeds 'BNP ballerina' dances into controversy". Yorkshire Evening Post. Leeds. 21 October 2009. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  2. Cahal Milmo, "Enter stage far right: 'BNP ballerina' dances again" Archived 22 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 12 Jan 2007
  3. Ian Cobain, "Inside the secret and sinister world of the BNP", The Guardian, 21 Dec 2006
  4. "Storm grows over 'BNP ballerina'", BBC News, 8 Jan 2007
  5. Hugh Muir, "BNP ballerina defies rising clamour to sack her", The Guardian, 1 Jan 2007
  6. "'BNP ballerina' returns to stage", BBC News, 12 Jan 2007
  7. Louise Radnofsky,"'BNP ballerina' to wed fellow far-right activist", The Guardian, 19 Dec 2007
  8. Martin Fletcher, "BNP: By all means name us, but you won’t shame us, says the ‘ordinary’ face of the far Right", The Times, 22 Nov 2008
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