Sir Fred and Mr B.

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29 May 2009

part three

It was another decade before Ashton's next creation at Sadler's Wells, but meanwhile he allowed the company (by now part of the Royal Ballet organisation) two further contrasted old works, the ebullient and demanding Les Patineurs and the romantic dance drama Apparitions.

Then in 1961, with The Two Pigeons, he gave new life to Messager's attractive but long neglected ballet score besides devising great roles for a young cast within his own adaptation (and considerable improvement) of the original plot, combining robust comedy and touching sentiment, as still to be seen in Birmingham Royal Ballet's current programmes. About that time the company also undertook three of Ashton's full-evening ballets: La Fille mal gardée, which entered the permanent repertory, and both Cinderella and Sylvia borrowing the Covent Garden productions during seasons there while the resident company was on tour.

Ashton insisted that he regarded the two Royal companies as equal but complementary rather than similar. Although both based on the classical ideals and vocabulary, he saw the one at Covent Garden as aiming at stylistic perfection, while the one from Sadler's Wells which did most of the touring put emphasis more on the liveliness of its performances, although with no neglect of technical standards.

Those qualities were reflected in the four works added to the second company’s repertory while Ashton was director (1963-70) following de Valois’ retirement. The specially created Sinfonietta was a plotless display piece, and Monotones a more austere display of pure dance.

The Dream, on the other hand, illustrated his Shakespearean gift for revealing characters and telling stories, and finally, requested by the city of Bonn to mark Beethoven’s bicentenary, came The Creatures of Prometheus, in which German audiences understood the dry wit of Ashton’s treatment better than those in London. (His jokes included making Mars suggest a bedraggled Napoleon, while his Terpsichore had overtones of de Valois.)

When Ashton was – prematurely, we may think – removed from the directorate, there followed a disastrously misconceived period when the company was replaced by a small 'New Group' touring a preponderance of experimental new ballets. Compensating factors included putting on Ashton's Symphonic Variations and Balanchine's Apollo, even if not really well enough danced.

Another Ashton revival, A Wedding Bouquet with its surrealist humour, helped mark the resumption of former policies and standards, and several more Balanchine ballets were introduced, all from the NYCB repertory. There is a myth that Balanchine was not interested in ballets with a plot, but reading through the complete list of his works soon proves that false.

However, the high number and supremacy of his pure dance classics (a genre in which only Ashton could compete), and his invention of a neoclassic style, explains why companies worldwide wanted revivals of them. The pre-Birmingham Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet was no exception, with its productions of his Allegro brillante, Four Temperaments and Concerto barocco in the 1970s, Tchaikovsky pas de deux and Theme and Variations in the 80s: all of them ballets to show the dancers' skills and musicality. Among them however was a contrast, the highly dramatic Prodigal Son. These did more for the Company than an unsuccessful attempt in 1982 to transfer Ashton’s film ballet Pas de Légumes to the stage.

Since the Company moved its base to Birmingham in 1990, it can be proud of the works by those two great choreographers which it has preserved. The justification for that care was amply demonstrated by the virtues (uniformly high in standard but rewardingly varied in style) of three more Balanchine ballets mounted in Birmingham: the touchingly detailed Mozartiana, the swirling invention and emotional implications of Serenade, and the exhilarating fun of Western Symphony.

Even more impressive are Birmingham Royal Ballet’s recent Ashton achievements. Besides mounting his Elgar evocation Enigma Variations and some smaller works, the Company’s seasons of his life-affirming comedies The Two Pigeons and La Fille mal gardée attracted admiring visitors from as far away as America. Likewise Birmingham Royal Ballet’s restoration of Ashton's great tragic dance-poem Dante Sonata, a unique manifestation of ballet’s potential, created in 1940 to immense success but, until this superb revival, not given since 1951. Now a new generation sees for itself one of British ballet’s most moving achievements. From a Company that sees its prime purpose as an unusual emphasis on making new work, this care also for the greats of the past is pretty impressive.

JOHN PERCIVAL

ENDS

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