Jane Simpson Retiring from Writing after 18 years at Balletco and DanceTabs

It’s with a heavy heart that I have just run Jane Simpson’s last review for DanceTabs. Jane, who has been with Balletco, and now DanceTabs, more or less from the start, has decided to retire from active criticism and it’s a huge loss to us all.

Balletco started in the summer of 1996 and within weeks an email of congratulation arrived and then Jane started contributing – initially not so many reviews and more standing information, terrific interviews and doing the weekly updates we ran at the time. The Legends of British Ballet pages were down to Jane as also were many of the Ballet Years series. It was a time when we all started with nothing on the net and there was enormous fun with Jane and others trying things out and steering the forum community forward as well. Jane also helped enormously when we put the ‘Following Sir Fred’s Steps’ book on the web. Over the summer we are going to do a piece about the early years that Jane helped make happen and made us not your average enthusiastic blog. Important to note also that Jane has contributed much elsewhere also, for me most notably as a regular at Dance Now – a hardcopy magazine whose demise I still lament.

So, there is more to say but in the meantime I want to thank Jane enormously for all she has done and the quiet authority and professionalism with which she has done it. She will be greatly missed and I’m sure I and others will still have a quiet word when something comes up and none of us newbies has any clue about whatsoever.

Jane, Thank you for everything.

Bruce Marriott

PS: I also posted this on BalletcoForum (the latest incarnation of the original Balletco forum) and where a number of followers have responded to the news – go read at:
http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/7017-jane-simpson-is-retiring-from-writing-after-18-years-at-balletco-and-dancetabs/