Welcome
An Audience With… six women dancers, spanning three generations, who shared one common passion; dance
An Audience With… began as an invitation to award-winning choreographer and dance artist Janice Parker from the Festival Theatre Edinburgh. Janice was offered free reign to create new work and sought to draw upon the experiences of performers who had at one time or another danced on the Festival Theatre stage in its original incarnation as The Edinburgh Empire
This online resource has been set up as a digital home to value and celebrate that work. It particularly shines a light on the careers, past and present, of four women dancers who dedicated their lives to Variety Theatre, and who kept dancing and contributing throughout their lives.
It doesn’t merely reflect or conserve but tells the story of the ever-evolving work that unfolded, developed and delighted over four glorious years. Here we also share the experience of different generations of dancers working together, celebrate the agency and value of older dancers, take pride in our collaborative, open-ended, way of working, and honour our extended ‘family’ of supporters, guests and contributors who joined us in various ways along the way.
Like everything in An Audience With… this is a place where we can come together, dancers and lovers of dance and Variety Theatre, to celebrate careers past and present, to share our passion and our practice, and to know that the future is built on these shoulders we stand on. We hope you enjoy.
This website has been created thanks to the legacy of June Don-Murray (1927 – 2019) and her family. It is both a celebration and an honouring of her life and her work in Variety Theatre and of her continuous work and ongoing life-long contribution to Dance.
We are also celebrating and honouring the life and work of Variety Dancer Betty Clarkson (1920 – 2020) who like June, contributed to Dance and Variety Theatre throughout her life;
And we are celebrating and honouring the life and work of Doreen Leighton-Ward (1931 – 2020) who like June and Betty, her friends and colleagues, contributed immensely to Variety Theatre and to Dance throughout her life
What a privilege to know and to work with all three women in the latter years of their dancing lives.
An Audience With... 