(There’s an energy around a legend that’s hard to capture with words, and being in a room filled with phenomenon’s celebrating a genius is virtually impossible to recount, but I will do my very best.)

 Yesterday, the intimate space of the Walter Reade Theater  was filled with the likes of Paul Taylor, Frederic Franklin, Damien Woetzel, Anna Kisselgoff, Edward Albee, and John Simon, all there to pay homage to one of the art world’s greatest critics, Clive Barnes, nearly a year after his death. Organized by his wife Valerie Taylor-Barnes (the former soloist with The Royal Ballet) and with approximately 200 invitees, it was a memorial filled with anecdotes and recollections of favorite reviews gathered from nearly five decades spent as one of the most influential and inspiring critics in the world.

 As a nascent writer, listening to the history he left behind with not only his words, but his character filled me with a vacant lightness. Having lost such a valuable teacher is simultaneously triumphant and sad; one is LUCKY to have had such richness in their life, but the loss in palpable (and you’re blessed if you get to honor their memory in the company of friends).  Like a child skipping down the stairs on Christmas morning I would flip to the back page of Dance Magazine with such urgency, eager to read his ponderings. His words never disappointed.

 After the memorial Damian Woetzel led a toast to Clive in the gallery, where everyone could raise a glass and truly rejoice a great man’s legacy. A man that could write about plumbing as eloquently as theater, as he did with this email to his editor, Barbara Hoffman at the New York Post:  “If any of you ever need a new toilet — and such things occur inevitably as one proceeds along life’s journey — do not go to Roto-Rooter. They seem to do more rotoring than rootering. They are giving us one hell of a time — and they can use that as a quote, ‘I had one hell of a time with Roto-Rooter’ — Clive Barnes, New York Post.”