Ashton Celebration: The Royal Ballet Dances Frederick Ashton is true to its title, offering both onstage and offstage tributes to Frederick Ashton, one of the twentieth century’s choreographic giants and architect of the English style. Through six ballets and fifteen minutes of interview footage, we get a look at the particularities and peculiarities of Ashton, and the rigor undergone to preserve the works. The ballets represent a full range of flavors in Ashton’s work, from the steamy, serpentine Monotones I to the heartbreakingly romantic Marguerite and Armand. The DVD was filmed live at the Royal Opera House in February 2013.
One of the special features on the DVD is a series of interview clips on the subject of the Frederic Ashton Foundation, whose aim is to perpetuate the legacy and work of the choreographer. Among comments from stagers and dancers about the preservation of the choreographer’s intent and style, Anthony Dowell makes a very important point: in all of this, the aim is not to “make museum pieces,” but to keep the works alive and in good custody so they remain relevant. Rojo adds the observation that the sheer difficulty of the choreography keeps the ballets challenging, even as dancers become more and more technically skilled.
The comparison is often drawn between Ashton and George Balanchine, but it’s especially striking in La Valse, the first ballet on the program, because Balanchine used the same Ravel score for a work of his own. Frederick Ashton did for British ballet what Balanchine did in the US: He defined a style, fiendishly athletic but with a different emphasis, more subtle but no less expressive. Ashton’s La Valse is most interesting for the complexities of epaulement within a standard choreographic composition. The whole affair sumptuously dark, a rich painting of Ravel’s unnerving score. It all dissolves into giddy, brassy chaos as the curtain descends on a corps de ballet of dozens and three principal couples.
Next are two very different pas de deux, the Meditation de Thais, set to Massenet, and Voices of Spring, set to Strauss. The first is aching and exotic, a la La Bayadere; the second is a playful showpiece more along the lines of Spring Waters. I don’t think this particular Voices of Spring is the most satisfying example available on video; Yuhui Choe and Alexander Campbell perform with great competence but little dimension. [Read more…]