Frederick Ashton

What's on

South-West tour spring 2008

Everyman Theatre
29 - 30 April 2008
The Lighthouse
2 - 3 May 2008
Northcott Theatre
6 - 7 May 2008
Hall for Cornwall
9 - 10 May 2008

Click here for a full diary of performances and links for how to book.

Full performance diary

Click here for performance listings.

Frederick Ashton

It is impossible to imagine British ballet without Frederick Ashton. Internationally regarded as our greatest and most influential choreographer, he was born exactly a century ago (by coincidence, just months after George Balanchine, who enjoyed similar pre-eminence in American ballet). Something would have developed in the absence of his contribution, but it would have been different and poorer. He was there right at the beginning 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 public 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 Le Diable s'amuse for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Le Rêve de Léonor for Les Ballets de Paris, Vision of Marguerite for London Festival Ballet, Picnic at Tintagel and Illuminations for the New York City 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 of its artistic directors, long apparent in practice, was first officially recognised 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 being forced into retirement (too soon, many thought) in 1970 with the title of Founder Choreographer. 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.

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