Like many girls obsessed with ballet, I grew up reading Lorna Hill’s A Dream of Sadler’s Wells series, mostly written in the 1950s. I read them repeatedly, mining them for every detail of the characters’ experiences at ballet school and later professional dancers. I also read every factual book on ballet in the school library, which were mostly written in the 1950s and 60s, getting Mum to photocopy pictures that I especially loved so I could stick them up on my wall. As a consequence, even though this was in the 1980s, I grew up with a very 1950s sense of the ballet world (and didn’t get to see many performances, either). The pictures that I loved were often from ballets such as Sylvia (the music for which I had on cassette and literally wore it out), Daphnis et Chloe, The Two Pigeons, Ondine, La Fille Mal Gardee, The Dream, among others (and usually featured Margot Fonteyn). I don’t think I realised it at the time, but these are all ballets choreographed by Frederick Ashton. The ballets mentioned in the Sadler’s Wells books are, similarly, Ashton ballets, although I can’t recall that his name is ever mentioned: Les Patineurs was one, and Cinderella.
Consequently, I have always had a bit of a thing for Frederick Ashton’s ballets, although I have seen very few, in fact (Fille, several times; pieces from A Month in the Country, Tales of Beatrix Potter; not much else). I missed the Royal Ballet’s Ashton triple bill last year, sadly, so I was excited to attend Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Ashton Celebration recently, especially as Birmingham Royal Ballet was formed in 1990 from what was the Sadlers Wells Ballet.
Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988) was a prolific choreographer. Starting out as a dancer, he was taught by Leonide Massine and Marie Rambert, and was influenced by Diaghilev’s ballets. He became choreographer for what became the Royal Ballet under Ninette de Valois, and he was choreographing from 1926 until 1985. His influence on British ballet, especially in the Fifties, was considerable; his work epitomises what we think of as the ‘English style’ in ballet, with particular ways of holding the head and arms. Yet there is also enormous lyricism in the movements he creates, expressive of emotion even in the most abstract works – and he is also capable of great comic moments (for example, the famous Clog Dance from Fille).
Ashton began his ballet career with a fascination for the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, and for much of his career he worked with Margot Fonteyn, choreographing several works for her. Apparently she later said that she ‘thought Ashton was a madman whose choreography was impossible’!
The Ashton Foundation is currently promoting his ballets through the Ashton Worldwide programme, of which this performance was part (and the evening was also dedicated to Caroline Miller, the late CEO of Birmingham Royal Ballet and herself a great innovator). You can see more of Ashton’s ballets online here. His versatility is extraordinary (and he certainly required it from his dancers, too).
The programme last night featured the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, and it was a pleasure to see this marvellous orchestra in the spotlight, especially at a time when some ballet companies cannot afford to maintain their orchestras. There were selections from music of ballets for which Ashton choreographed, some with dances, including Birthday Offering, which was perhaps the highlight of the evening for me (and I gather BRB will be performing this in 2026, excitingly). The first half ended with selections from La Fille mal Gardee, including the chickens and the clog dance; the second half included the marvellous, sensuous Rhapsody with music by Rachmaninov. I was, I think, slightly disappointed that Sylvia was not danced, although it was a pleasure to hear the music, with echoes of my childhood tape recorder! And Voices of Spring, the concluding piece, with music by Johann Strauss II and danced delightfully by Miki Mizutani and Max Maslen, was a real Spring tonic: rose petals were scattered across the stage as the dancers seemed to fly around the stage, with Mizutani mostly held aloft so that she seemed to skim across the land awakening the world; appropriate for the time of year, and also, it seemed to me, in a world that seems often dreary and beset with troubles, a lovely antidote to send the audience smiling into the night.