FREDERICK ASHTON (1904-88)
Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet
It is impossible to imagine British ballet without Frederick Ashton. Something would have developed, but it would have been different and poorer. He was there when it began and, first with his teacher Marie Rambert, then with Ninette de Valois, helped to found and build up not just one but our first two permanent repertory dance companies.
Paradoxically, this most English of choreographers was born in Ecuador and brought up in Peru. There, as a schoolboy, he saw Pavlova dance and, bewitched, found his vocation and lifelong inspiration. But family pressure consigned him first to an English private school, then to a job in the City, before he could begin secretly taking ballet classes once a week. By luck, he started with Léonide Massine.
When Massine’s work took him abroad, he recommended Ashton to continue his studies with Rambert. Ashton’s ambition was to be a great dancer; a vain hope, given his slender physique and late start. But Rambert made him try his hand at choreography when he was only 21 and helped him to his first commission: A Tragedy of Fashion, a chic, amusing little ballet for the revue ”Riverside Nights" in 1926. This was also Ashton’s first collaboration with Sophie Fedorovitch, who designed many of his works, became his best friend and was a lifelong valued adviser.
Ashton spent a year in Paris as a dancer in Ida Rubinstein’s company where, under Bronislava Nijinska’s direction, he taught himself a lot about choreography by observing closely the way she worked. Back in England, he became joint founder-director in 1930 of the Ballet Club, later renamed Ballet Rambert. Among his earliest works for them and the Camargo Society (a producing body uniting all available British talent), Capriol Suite and Façade have lived on in the repertory. At that period, too, Ashton partnered three great ballerinas, Karsavina, Lopokova and Markova (later he added Fonteyn) and made roles for all of them. He danced in Les Sylphides, Carnaval, Swan Lake Act II and many new works by himself and others.
In September 1931 Ashton created his first work for de Valois’ young company (Regatta, slight and soon dropped). Several more works for the Vic-Wells Ballet (as it was then called) followed before he joined full-time as dancer and choreographer in 1935. By then he had staged his first production overseas: dances in Virgil Thomson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts, given in Connecticut, New York and Chicago. In later years Ashton sometimes accepted commissions from other companies, making Devil’s Holiday for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Le Rêve de Léonor for Les Ballets de Paris, Picnic at Tintagel and Illuminations for the New York City Ballet, Vision of Marguerite for Festival Ballet, the first Western production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet for the Royal Danish Ballet, and La Valse for La Scala, Milan.
But except for such brief excursions, and war service in the RAF, he remained as de Valois’ associate while the company grew to become The Royal Ballet. In 1948 his position as one if its artistic directors, long apparent in practice, was first officially recognized in the billing. He was later named Associate Director and in 1963 succeeded de Valois as Director, a post he held for seven years before having to leave (far too soon, many thought) in 1970 with the title of Founder Choreographer because the ill-advised management did not renew his contract. As Director, Ashton secured the survival of Nijinska’s Les Noces and Les Biches by having her mount them after years of neglect; he also enriched the repertory with two creations by Antony Tudor and two major Balanchine revivals.
Ashton’s contribution to British ballet was recognized with a CBE in 1950, knighthood in 1962, appointment as a Companion of Honour in 1970 and the Order of Merit in 1977. France admitted him to the Légion d’Honneur in 1962 and Denmark made him a Commander of the Order of Dannebrog in 1963. He was honoured also by the Royal Academy of Dancing, the Carina Ari Foundation in Sweden and by Durham, East Anglia, London and Oxford Universities.
Besides about 80 major ballets, many shorter ones and additions to the classics, Ashton produced innumerable dances for operas and films, revues and musical comedies; he found that his experience in the commercial theatre taught him much about making effects quickly and clearly. He directed operas too, most memorably Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice in 1953 with Kathleen Ferrier.
Ballet, however, remained his first love and he covered an unsurpassed range. His flair for sheer entertainment made some think his early work lightweight, but the brilliant invention and beautiful construction of, say, Les Rendezvous and Les Patineurs gave them great staying power. Many people think A Wedding Bouquet, from that same period, the wittiest comedy ballet ever made, and he succeeded equally in romantic works, Apparitions, Nocturne and Horoscope.
The outbreak of war inspired Ashton to the tragic, impassioned Dante Sonata, and with peace he created the sublimely beautiful Symphonic Variations, first of a series of fine plotless ballets, outstanding among which are Scènes de Ballet, Valses nobles et sentimentales (happily revived lately – like Dante Sonata – after being thought lost) and Rhapsody. Cinderella, in 1948, was the first big three-act ballet created for a British company. Daphnis and Chloë and The Two Pigeons both survived an initially cool reception to be recognized among his greatest creations; the former brought a great but neglected ballet score back into the theatre, the latter rescued trivial but delightful music from Palm Court obscurity. Birthday Offering, a joyous celebration of the company’s silver jubilee, offered a cascade of solos showing its dancers at their glittering best.
The flowing choreography of Ondine uniquely embodied one aspect of Margot Fonteyn’s gifts; Marguerite and Armand gave the perfect expression to her partnership with Rudolf Nureyev. The Dream revealed the potential of a new partnership, Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell. La Fille mal gardée must be the happiest of all ballets, and the cool, poised invention of Monotones make it one of the most serene. Nobody could better Ashton at showing off the individual gifts of dancers, whether in exquisite miniatures or in company works such as A Month in the Country and Enigma Variations. He could restore old genres – Sylvia and The Creatures of Prometheus, or stylishly reflect current taste – Jazz Calendar and Sinfonietta.
All these and many more show Ashton’s choreographic genius. This diversity of Ashton’s is the measure of his greatness and the explanation of its nature. He created the most touchingly tender love duets, and some of the most erotic too; like Shakespeare he could move within one work from sweet lyricism to knockabout comedy or delicately barbed wit. Besides the ballerinas, who from Fonteyn onwards had their greatest roles in his ballets, he made parts for a series of exceptional clowns including Robert Helpmann and Alexander Grant. And the gentle humour of Ashton’s own Step-Sister in Cinderella lives on in many memories.
Ashton created more than ballets. The dancers who grew up dancing his works developed the way he led them. It was hard work too: Ashton’s dances (when done as he wanted) usually look easy, but the performers know how difficult it is to achieve the desired effect. He always drew inspiration from a few outstanding artists but was eager also to foster young talent, encouraging inexperienced dancers to find in themselves abilities that they might never have guessed without his help. Equally, choreographers from Kenneth MacMillan to David Bintley and Christopher Wheeldon learnt from him. Consequently, Ashton’s ballets have been the greatest single influence on the way The Royal Ballet dances, even if that company has inexcusably neglected him lately. And, luckily, in many other parts of the world his work is passionately admired by audiences who find in Ashton’s style, with its poise, its purity, its freshness and its humour, the finest embodiment of a truly English style of ballet.
--JOHN PERCIVAL