Attitudes

Dance Magazine, July, 2004 by Clive Barnes

THE YEAR 1904 was a very good year for dance: It was that prime vintage that saw the birth of both George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton, conceivably the two greatest classical ballet choreographers of the twentieth century. The dangerously amusing spell-check on my computer renders their names as Galantine and Asthenia, and I am sure that one day someone's inadequate command of that "Ignore" key will immortalize those names in print. However, the Georgian Balanchine (originally Balanchivadze but never Galantine) arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, in January, while the English Ashton (hardly Asthenia) arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in September. They were both pioneers, Balanchine in the United Slates, and Ashton in Britain, and both regarded the nineteenth-century choreographer Marius Petipa as their master. They were cautiously aware of one another and, with a sometimes oblique politeness, respectful of each other's talent and position.

As far as Ashton is concerned, I am reminded of how the singer Bing Crosby, asked to comment on Frank Sinatra, reportedly replied, "Sinatra has a voice that comes once in a lifetime--too bad it had to come in mine." I got the impression that sometimes Ashton felt overwhelmed by Balanchine's fecundity and brilliance. Yet Ashton, while living a little lazily in the Russian-American's shadow, had areas of choreographic eloquence that matched, and some would say surpassed, Balanchine's own.

THEIR DANCE backgrounds were markedly different. Balanchine's was traditional: a pupil of the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, then the Maryinsky Ballet, and early exposure to Moscow's experimental choreographer Kasyan Goleizovsky, before defecting from Soviet Russia to join Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1924. Impeccable credentials, you must agree. Ashton's early career was altogether dimmer. Brought up in Peru, he saw Pavlova dance there in 1917 and his future was determined. But he didn't start serious training until 1923 in London, studying first with Leonide Massine and later Marie Rambert. By 1926 he had made his debut as a choreographer with a work for the Rambert dancers, A Tragedy of Fashion. After a stint in 1928 as a dancer with the Ida Rubinstein company, where he came under the influence of Bronislava Nijinska, he returned to London to play a leading role in the foundation of British ballet, first at Rambert's Ballet Club and later with Ninette de Valois' Vic-Wells Ballet.

Ashton's influence on British ballet is--or at least should have been--as profound as Balanchine's is on American. The New York City Ballet has cherished and maintained Balanchine's repertoire. On the other hand, Britain's Royal Ballet, the company whose style Ashton virtually founded, has been far more casual in its husbandry of the Ashton repertoire. City Ballet's current Balanchine Celebration, organized by Peter Martins, dwarfs the plans of The Royal Ballet for its 2004/5 season--although these plans do include a welcome revival of Ashton's full-evening Sylvia.

SURPRISINGLY perhaps, this most English of choreographers has been more appreciated in the United States than in Britain. Quite a few of his major ballets, such as Daphnis and Chloe (1951) and Ondine (1958), generally panned in London, were welcomed by the New York critics. Indeed, Ashton himself felt that American audiences were more appreciative of him. It is also perhaps revealing that the most concentrated homage during this centennial period is probably the two-week Ashton festival at Lincoln Center Festival (see page 40).

One of the tragedies of contemporary ballet is the number of Ashton works that have seemingly been lost. Some, such as Variations on a Theme of Purcell, were admittedly minor pieces. But other ballets are substantial losses. They include such masterpieces as Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Madame Chrysantheme, Illuminations, and Homage to the Queen, and such important works as The Wanderer, Nocturne, Don Juan, Apparitions, Picnic at Tintagel, and Rinaldo and Armida, and even such early chamber pieces for Rambert as Les Masques. More could and should have been done to save this repertoire.

So, wherein lies the greatness of Ashton? Why worry what happens to his ballets? The loss of any major repertoire diminishes the art of dance. More than that, Ashton's feel for an intensely poetic form of neoclassicism makes Symphonic Variations and Scenes de Ballet quite different from their Balanchine counterparts, the cool Concerto Barocco and the diamond-sharp Symphony in C. There is also his wonderfully dramatic sense of character revealed in, say Enigma Variations, or La Fille mal gardee. Finally, quite simply, The Royal Ballet danced divinely under his artistic direction in the late 1960s. As Arthur Miller said, in a very different context, "Attention must be paid." In my view, despite the current and forthcoming festivities, not enough is being paid. Ashton was a rare genius of dance.

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to DANCE MAGAZINE since 1956.