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Ashton himself danced the step as an Ugly Sister in Cinderella.<ref>Vaughan, p. 233</ref> The Royal Ballet has a demonstration of the step on its website, explained by the company's ballet mistress, Ursula Hageli and danced by Romany Pajdak.<ref>[http://www.roh.org.uk/news/abc-of-ballet-the-fred-step "The Fred Step"], ABC of Ballet, Royal Opera House, accessed 23 June 2013</ref>
Ashton himself danced the step as an Ugly Sister in Cinderella.<ref>Vaughan, p. 233</ref> The Royal Ballet has a demonstration of the step on its website, explained by the company's ballet mistress, Ursula Hageli and danced by Romany Pajdak.<ref>[http://www.roh.org.uk/news/abc-of-ballet-the-fred-step "The Fred Step"], ABC of Ballet, Royal Opera House, accessed 23 June 2013</ref>


==Personal life==
==Personal life and legacy==
Ashton died in 1988 at his home, Chandos Lodge, in [[Eye, Suffolk]], England. He left the rights to many of his ballets to friends and colleagues, including Fonteyn ('' Daphnis and Chloe'' and ''Ondine''), Dowell (''The Dream'' and ''A Month in the Country''), Michael Somes (''Cinderella'' and ''Symphonic Variations''), Alexander Grant (''La Fille mal gardée'' and ''Façade''), Antony Dyson (''Enigma Variations'' and ''Monotones'', Brian Shaw (''Les Patineurs'' and ''Rendezvous'')<ref>Billen, Andrew. [http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:LTIB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0F90F793A42A16A0&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "Ashton leaves Ondine royalties to Fonteyn"], ''The Times'', 3 December 1988</ref> Rights to most of his other ballets were left to his nephew, [[Anthony Russell-Roberts]], who was Administrative Director of the Royal Ballet from 1983 to 2009.<ref>[http://ashtonballets.com/?page_id=32 "The Ballets], Ashton & Russell Roberts, accessed 23 June 2013</ref>
Ashton was a great friend of the [[Marquess of Anglesey|Paget]] family and was a frequent visitor to the family seat at [[Plas Newydd]]; it was there that one of the Paget daughters, [[Lady Rose McLaren|Lady Rose]], fell hopelessly in love with him; he rebuffed her advances and at one point returned her letters - after having corrected her spelling. Despite this, they remained friends.


To perpetuate the legacy of Ashton and his ballets, the Frederick Ashton Foundation was set up in 2011. It is independent of, but works closely with, the Royal Ballet.<ref>{http://www.roh.org.uk/news/frederick-ashton-foundation-launched Frederick Ashton Foundation Launched"], Royal Opera House, 10 October 2011</ref>
He died in 1988 at his home, Chandos Lodge, in [[Eye, Suffolk]], England.

Ashton's nephew, [[Anthony Russell-Roberts]], was Administrative Director of [[The Royal Ballet]] from 1983 to 2009.


==Honours==
==Honours==

Revision as of 13:05, 23 June 2013

Sir Frederick Ashton
Born
Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton

(1904-09-17)17 September 1904
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Died18 August 1988(1988-08-18) (aged 83)
Chandos Lodge, Eye, Suffolk, England
OccupationChoreographer

Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton OM, CH, CBE (17 September 1904 – 18 August 1988) was a dancer and choreographer. He was the founder choreographer of The Royal Ballet in London; he also worked as a director and choreographer of opera, film and revue.


Life and career

Early years

Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George Ashton (1864–1924) and his second wife, Georgiana (1869–1939), née Fulcher. George Ashton was manager of the Central and South American Cable Company and vice-consul at the British embassy in Guayaquil.[1] In 1907 the family moved to Lima, Peru, where Ashton attended a Dominican school. When they returned to Guayaquill in 1914 he attended a school for children of the English colony. One of his formative influences was serving as altar boy to the Roman Catholic Archbishop, which inspired in him a love of ritual.[1] Another, still more potent, influence was being taken to see Anna Pavlova dance in 1917. He was immediately determined that he would become a dancer.[1]

Dancing was not a career acceptable to a conventional English family at that time. Ashton later recalled, "My father was horrified. You can imagine the middle-class attitude. My mother would say, 'He wants to go on the stage.' She could not bring herself to say 'into the ballet.'"[2] Ashton's father sent him to England in 1919 to Dover College, where he was miserable. Homosexual, and with a distinctly Spanish accent that his classmates laughed at, he did not fit in at a minor public school of the early 1920s.[2] He was not academically inclined, and his father decided that on leaving the school in 1921 Ashton should join a commercial company. He worked for an import-export firm in the City of London, where his ability to speak Spanish and French as well as English was an advantage.[1]

In January 1924 George Ashton committed suicide. His widow was left financially dependent on her elder sons, who ran a successful business in Guayaquil. She moved to London to be with Ashton and his younger sister, Edith.[1]



Only then could he begin to take classes in secret and eventually, when frustrated ambition was harming his health, he was allowed to work full time and openly at what he wanted.

He began his career with the Ballet Rambert which was originally called The Ballet Club. He rose to fame with Vic-Wells Ballet (later to become the Sadler's Wells Ballet before it was designated The Royal Ballet), becoming its resident choreographer in the 1930s. Work from this decade that has stayed in repertory includes Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, and A Wedding Bouquet.

World War II inspired Ashton to create some works along more sombre lines, including Dante Sonata (recently reconstructed after having been thought lost), and after the war he turned to plotless ballet, with such works as Symphonic Variations and Scènes de ballet.

The end of the war saw his first major three-act ballet for a British company, his version of Sergei Prokofiev's Cinderella (1948), which was followed by Sylvia (1952), and Ondine (1958), with choreography created especially to display Margot Fonteyn's unique talents and music by Hans Werner Henze. While Ondine was a vehicle for Fonteyn, Marguerite and Armand displayed the excellence of Fonteyn's partnership with Rudolf Nureyev. His version of La fille mal gardée was particularly successful, and his broad travesti performances as one of two comic Ugly Stepsisters in Cinderella, the other being Robert Helpmann, were annual events for many years.

Ashton was Director of the Royal Ballet from 1963 to 1970. He brought new works by Antony Tudor to the company, as well as guaranteeing the survival of several of Bronislava Nijinska's ballets by having her mount Les noces and Les biches. Two important revivals of George Balanchine's works also marked Ashton's time as Director.

He also enjoyed a productive career away from ballet as a choreographer for films, revues, and musicals. His work in opera included, in 1953, directing Kathleen Ferrier in Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice at Covent Garden. In 1971, Ashton performed the role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in the Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter, which he also choreographed.[3] Ashton was also responsible for choreographing the dance sequences in "The Jealous Lover" segment of the film The Story of Three Loves.

Choreography

Main article: List of ballets choreographed by Frederick Ashton

Ashton created over eighty ballets, a selection of which are given below.

Full-length ballets

Shorter works

The Fred step

Ashton included in many of his ballets a signature step, known to dancers as "the Fred step". It is defined by David Vaughan as "posé en arabesque, coupé dessous, small développé a la seconde, pas de bourrée dessous, pas de chat"[4] Adrian Grater has enlarged the definition to include the transitional movements;[5] this in Benesh notation is transcribed thus:

It was based on a step used by Anna Pavlova in a gavotte that she frequently performed. Alicia Markova recalled in 1994 that Ashton had first used the step in a short ballet that concluded Nigel Playfair's 1930 production of Marriage à la Mode. It is not seen in Ashton's 1931 Façade, but after that, it became a feature of his choreography. The critic Alastair Macaulay writes:

[T]]he Fred step is often tucked away. He may give it to the ballerina (Antoinette Sibley as La Capricciosa in Varii Capricci, 1983) or to supporting dancers (Symphonic Variations, 1946). He may give it to a corps de ballet of peasants (Sylvia 1952), to junior dancers (a pair of dancing artichokes in the … vegetable ballet he made for the 1979 film "Stories from a Flying Trunk"), or to a minor character (Moth in The Dream, 1964). Often the eye is distracted from it by action elsewhere onstage. In each instance, it is changed in some aspect (particularly its conclusion), so that the entire step seems metamorphosed.[6]

Ashton himself danced the step as an Ugly Sister in Cinderella.[7] The Royal Ballet has a demonstration of the step on its website, explained by the company's ballet mistress, Ursula Hageli and danced by Romany Pajdak.[8]

Personal life and legacy

Ashton died in 1988 at his home, Chandos Lodge, in Eye, Suffolk, England. He left the rights to many of his ballets to friends and colleagues, including Fonteyn ( Daphnis and Chloe and Ondine), Dowell (The Dream and A Month in the Country), Michael Somes (Cinderella and Symphonic Variations), Alexander Grant (La Fille mal gardée and Façade), Antony Dyson (Enigma Variations and Monotones, Brian Shaw (Les Patineurs and Rendezvous)[9] Rights to most of his other ballets were left to his nephew, Anthony Russell-Roberts, who was Administrative Director of the Royal Ballet from 1983 to 2009.[10]

To perpetuate the legacy of Ashton and his ballets, the Frederick Ashton Foundation was set up in 2011. It is independent of, but works closely with, the Royal Ballet.[11]

Honours

Ashton received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance in 1959. In 1962, he was knighted for his services to ballet. He was admitted into the French Légion d'honneur in the same year. He was made a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1963, and was awarded the Gold Medal from the Carina Aria Foundation in Sweden in 1972.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e Walker, Kathrine Sorley, "Ashton, Sir Frederick William Mallandaine (1904–1988)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 31 March 2013 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  2. ^ a b "Sir Frederick Ashton – Great Choreographer and founder-figure of British ballet" TheTimes 20 August 1988
  3. ^ Yeatman, Linda (15 March 1971). "The Tale of Beatrix Potter's Ballet". The Times. p. 9. Issue 58122.
  4. ^ Vaughan p. 9
  5. ^ Grater, Adrian . "Following the Fred Step", Balletco, accessed 23 June 2013
  6. ^ Macaulay, Alastair. "Notes on the Fred Step", Frederick Ashton and his Ballets, accessed 23 June 2013
  7. ^ Vaughan, p. 233
  8. ^ "The Fred Step", ABC of Ballet, Royal Opera House, accessed 23 June 2013
  9. ^ Billen, Andrew. "Ashton leaves Ondine royalties to Fonteyn", The Times, 3 December 1988
  10. ^ "The Ballets, Ashton & Russell Roberts, accessed 23 June 2013
  11. ^ {http://www.roh.org.uk/news/frederick-ashton-foundation-launched Frederick Ashton Foundation Launched"], Royal Opera House, 10 October 2011

References

  • Anderson, Zoë (2006). The Royal Ballet – 75 years. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571227953.
  • Franchi, Cristina (2004). Frederick Ashton – Founder Choreographer of the Royal Ballet. Royal Opera House heritage series. London: Oberon. ISBN 1840024615.
  • Vaughan, David (1999). Frederick Ashton and his Ballets (second ed.). London: Dance Books. ISBN 1852730625.

Further reading

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