In 1891, she replaced Loie Fuller in Charles Hoyt's long-running hit musical, A Trip to Chinatown staged at New York's Madison Square Theatre.

[7] After a company tour to Australia, Clayton returned to Broadway in Hoyt's A Black Sheep.

She achieved fame in Paris and her performances at the Théâtre de la Gaîté contributed to her becoming the first foreign female dancer to receive the French Legion of Honor.

[10] [11] Clayton was widely famous in her time, with critics "hailing her as the embodiment and spokesperson of American dance, [and] dubbing her America’s “'greatest premiere danseuse.

She is here, there, and everywhere, and always buoyant, light-hearted, inconsequential, and full of that restless, tireless nervous energy that animates so much of American life.

- Caroline Caffin, author of Vaudeville: the Book, 1914 A modern historian states that Clayton had a lasting influence on dance in America, writing that, with her speed, flexibility, and versatility, she "Became the prototype for the Ziegfeldian stage dancer .

[her] technique prefigured the kind of female dancing that George Balanchine would create in his Broadway works."