Pauline Clayden was one of the dancers who formed the core of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in the decade after the second world war, leading up to its royal charter in 1956. Never a principal, she was one of those talented, adaptable, highly valued soloists without which ballet companies can never survive.
Clayden, who has died aged 103, would feature in the corps de ballet and step out of it to dance leading roles. It says much about her talent that she often stepped into those created for Margot Fonteyn; for Frederick Ashton, the choreographer, she was the ideal dancer to do so.
