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Dancing Ashton.

Article Excerpt
ROMANTIC, PASSIONATE, AND funny, Frederick Ashton's choreography captures the best and worst of what it means to be human. The erotic playfulness of the pas de deux for Oberon and Titania in The Dream, for instance, reflects the underlying relief of harmony restored. The charm of his Cinderella owes as much to the comic preening of his stepsisters-in-drag as it does to the yearning of his wistful heroine.

IT'S A SWEET, SANE WORLD AS Ashton sees it. Skaters may slip and fall, but they get up. The golden age may be lost, but the joys of a country farm remain undiminished. Even a doomed courtesan's heartbreak has its own glamour. While symmetry and form have a place, they don't undermine Ashton's essential warmth and gallantry. As true an heir to Petipa's classicism as Balanchine, Ashton's choreography is the architecture of the human heart. Our look at Ashton includes a guide to the ballets appearing in the upcoming centenary as well as interviews with dancers who perform them.

GUIDE TO ASHTON BALLETS

Fans of the great English choreographer Frederick Ashton can look forward to a feast this month, when the Lincoln Center Festival celebrates his centennial. (He was the exact contemporary of George Balanchine.) Below is a decade-by-decade guide to some of his ballets.

The 1930s: Ashton joined Sadler's Wells Ballet (later The Royal Ballet) in 1935 as dancer and resident choreographer. His earlier ballets had included Les Rendezvous, the first full-fledged statement of his own personal form of classicism--and thus the basis of the British style: lyrical, precise, yet robust. Ashton at once cast the company's young ballerina, Margot Fonteyn, in his version of Stravinsky's Le Baiser de la fee. With her innate musicality and flawless line, she was to become his muse.

Les Patineurs portrays various types to be found on the ice-rink: showoffs, lovers, beginners. The...

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