Rina

Thank you FLOSS for reviving this thread. I wonder whether we could add a further element to it - Ashton's "aesthetic" - by which I mean his particular approach to ballet as an art form. You could say his style expresses his aesthetic. Wisely, he refrained from explaining himself or his work to the public. At the end of his book, David Vaughan includes a short article Ashton wrote in 1959 in which he ventures a few thoughts on narrative and non-narrative ballets. Both had the capacity "to move and excite a poetic response in the audience", but non-narrative works such as Les Sylphides and Serenade can "leave an audience suspended in a trance-like response (that a story ballet can never achieve) because of their very directness and delicacy of poetic potency that needle-like reaches the heart". He did not believe that everything could be expressed in ballet but that a choreographer "should deal with that which is spiritual and eternal rather than that which is material and temporary". It's a long time since i read "Secret Muses" but I do remember a number of times that Ashton spoke about his dreams, and even tried to give a dream image material form in his choreography. He had a religious sensibility without belonging to a particular system. His education seems to have been an endurance test for him but he emerged with a very open heart, and with the help of some good friends like Lambert and Fedorovitch became extremely cultured, and alive to many forms of imagination, in particular Greek myth. He was daring and experimental, as in Tiresias or Persephone. He was good at ritualised movement as in his opera work. In what ways is his style "poetic"? I haven't really thought about this before. Poetry speaks in images and rhythms, compressing emotions, crystallising them into a memorable sight or sound, formal beauty. It is not literal but metaphorical. In a ballet, space becomes an element in its own right (as it is in some traditions, a fifth element) and therefore animated and alive. A dancer trained in the Cecchetti school brings a wealth of harmonies to such a space that their movement is best described as musical, even if there is no actual music playing. I sense this quality in Ashton right from the beginning with Capriol Suite. His poetry is precise, there is nothing fuzzy about it, and yet "needle-like" it reaches the heart. Hence the vital importance of sticking to his "text" as closely as possible.

I was lucky enough to see three casts plus the cinema relay and am grateful to the RB for reviving this life-enhancing work. I would just add a few thoughts about the production. The music is richly textured, and the choreography brims with exquisite detail, so there was a good case I would have thought for the design (or re-design) to let these elements shine without imposing itself on them. As others have said, "Less is more" is a good motto here, as is "Too many cooks". However, the RB went in the opposite direction, stating that it was to be a production suitable for modern audiences, or something like that. What did they mean? And what effect did such "modernising" have on the ballet? The use of projections onto the auditorium suggests a nod towards immersive theatre which is so popular now. I went to the glorious productions of Punchdrunk - Faust and the Masque of the Red Death - ten years ago many times and became hooked. However, at the beginning of Cinderella, it is the music which is the immersive element with its opening octave leap and melancholy tune which returns at important moments when Cinderella is alone. The accompanying light show (which my neighbour thought was flash from mobile phone cameras) set itself up in competition with the music to the latter's detriment. This kept on happening. In the Seasons interlude, the projections onto the spandrels of the set spread out slowly while the dancer was preparing and distracted my attention away from her. It required some effort to look away from them. After a while it became clear that they were to do with the designers' "concept" for the ballet. "Beware designers bearing concepts". There is nothing wrong with having a background idea such as the natural world as inspiration but here I felt that the theme ran away with itself such that the designers ended up serving their concept rather than the music and the dancing. Ashton is sometimes accused of being "fussy", especially by American critics, but with this production Ashton's contribution is clear and precise; it is the design which is fussy - e.g. maximalist colouring in the costumes, mash up of styles, etc. The excess made it a little difficult to pick out Spring and Autumn in particular from the context. This diffusion of the dancer into the background led to a loss of the ballet's focus. The idea of nature breaking into the loveless world of Cinderella was not particularly coherent. Was it showing a myth of rebirth? Similarly did the projection of the signs of the zodiac mean that "It's all in the stars" or that the love story was a cosmic event. They could have added a reference to the alchemical marriage of the soul and spirit. But surely all this is far too heavy for the ballet: it ought not to be forced to bear so many layers of meaning. The set for Act 2 was undeniably impressive but it was way too solid. It is fine for the designer to be inspired by Waddesdon if the outcome is a poetic evocation of a ballroom or the prince's house. I feel that the imagination responds more to suggestion or incompleteness than the rather literal-minded approach taken here. I agree with a comment early on in this thread that the production betrays a certain lack of confidence in Ashton's work, in particular in the ability of his choreography to speak for itself. It also demonstrated the new dominance of the lighting designer which has emerged since his death. Light effects have a tendency to be heartless, not a word we associate with Ashton. Technology, conceptualism, more and more ("stunts" I hear Sir Fred say in my mind) don't fit here. Paring down, essences, the light touch, - those would be my suggestions for the next RB proudction of Cinderella. The magic would then be less a case of external application and more a case of experiencing the soul in the steps more deeply.

Your comments Emeralds about Ashton's creative process bring me back to the question of his place in the arts. Shakespeare is sometimes criticised for taking someone else's play, or history or travel book as his starting point, even to the point of plagiarism. But they all end up completely transformed into the imagined world of the theatre. The "story" he begins with is only the literal part, just as the Greek tragedians worked with myths which were already known to the audince. It's the metamorphosis from the literal to the work of art that matters. Ashton's is a subtle art as he begins with a work of imagination and re-works it in his own medium. Ashton wisely said little about his own process. We know he always immersed himself in the music. Julie Kavanagh has a long section on A Month in the Country in her biography Secret Muses and observes that the episode with the keys may have been inspired by Turgenev's novel First Love; she also makes a lot of other interesting suggestions on Ashton's sources. But I don't think there is anything mechanical about the process or even that Ashton was always consciously aware of the connections. Ashton sought the essence of Turgenev's play - the fate of Natalia Petrovna. In the duet La ci darem, Zerlina is propositioned by the predatory Don Giovanni. She is initially conflicted - "Vorrei e non vorrei" - she wants to surrender to him, and at the same time she doesn't - through a mixture perhaps of fear, propriety, loyalty to her fiance, guilt, doubt about the Don's promise to marry her, and more. This aspect is forcefully shown in the choreography but near the end of the great pdd. The music is both good for dancing, as Emeralds points out, and psychologically apt: it reverberates with erotic attraction and inhibition, as the words and the drama were distilled in Mozart's imagination. I think it is this distillation - "paring down" Ashton called it - which he shares with the great artists. In the article posted by bridiem, Daniel Pratt says: "What is truly impressive is how [Scenes de Ballet] distils the essence of classicism. ... For me, Ashton's ballets are usually fragrant and aromatic, suffused with a specific time or place". Ashton the great parfumier. By the time he arrived at the rehearsal room he had reduced music and theme to essences and was available to suggestion from the dancers. He could tell whether what he was offered was the outward form of the essence or not, or its potential for being infused by it. He is like an alchemist distilling the contents of the vessel, and distilling again and again. It is like Fille - there is nothing extraneous left. As well as the characters in Ashton's ballet, we can also imagine Turgenev there as Rakitin, Chopin playing the piano, Zerlina in Natalia's conflicted passion, and many more unseen presences, like ancestors willing us on. That moment when the dancers pause and face us - it elicited some nervous laughter at the performances I attended - is radical. Are they contemplating their fate, or are they questioning us? As if to say, what is this mystery we are living - you and us? The image which abides is Kolya running in a circle with his kite - it bespeaks perfection, an image of eternity, imagined as a dancer in motion bound to Eros.

Yes, I think so too, Emeralds. At first sight it seems to be a comic interlude, introduced as a contrast to the darkening of mood just before Beliaev's arrival. But I prefer to read it like a poem - like something by Pablo Neruda or Lorca, or even by Ashton's favourite Rimbaud - with images that can't be fully "understood", only experienced and savoured, and played with. Yslaev enters - he has "lost his keys" - he is all "locked up inside", he has no bearings in his life, no purpose - and by urging everyone to search for them, he infects the household with his own lostness and frustration. It's choreographed movement without dancing: people collide with each other or are lifted out of the way, suggesting a emotional clumsiness and lack of grace in their ordinary social interactions despite their calm and polite exterior. Yslaev is a man who is closed to deep feeling, and by marrying Natalia has "locked her up" emotionally too. When she gives him the key, it has no meaning for him - it's just a key. But for her - we are left wondering: will there be consequences? Now she has the key, will she continue to lock herself away or will she be open to new experiences? Is it a soul key? The "comic interlude" has presented the dilemma of the ballet, like the opening of a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. Soon afterwards Beliaev arrives. Unlike Yslaev, who is empty-handed and sucks in the energy of those round him, Beliaev brings a present for Kolya - a kite - with all its associations of play, liberation, open air, connection, opportunity. Kolya shoots an imaginary arrow at them - a sly reference to Eros, who had wings, and flew like Kolya's kite. The arrow will wound where it finds an open heart. Yslev is never wounded because he cannot fly - he is decent but has no imagination. But Natalia's soul opens as she gives Beliaev a rose - like the key to her heart. At the end she lets it drop to the ground, like a broken wing, or a crashed kite. There are several metaphors at work which relate to each other - finding is to losing what opening is to closing, for example. The images could all be taken sexually too - Thomas Moore wrote a beautiful book "The Soul of Sex" finding many intimate connections between the two. At one point Kolya runs around the centre of the stage in circles flying his kite. It's an image that reverberates.

Well put Bridiem. Your words remind me of Ashton's comment quoted by David Vaughan that a choreographer "should deal with that which is spiritual and eternal rather than that which is material and temporary". It's interesting that Daniel Pratt, in that marvellous article you re-posted from Jane S, says that Scenes de Ballet "has something eternal about it". Brendan McCarthy thought that Ashton's ballets had strong roots in the Catholic world into which he was born: https://dancelog.blogspot.com/2004/09/choreographer-in-carmel-tablet-11.html His experience as a server to the Archbishop of Lima taught Ashton - in his own words - "to time things rightly and to make effects at leisure, and the proper times for climaxes and the whole rightful measure of things and the ecstasy of ritual" (Kavanagh, Secret Muses, p.23). I think that phrase "the whole rightful measure of things" is important to this thread. It doesn't require belief of any kind. I don't know whether Ashton would have accepted any religious labels for himself. The phrase points to an inherent beauty and meaning in life. In the ancient Greek world of Euclid and Plato, the "rightful measure of things" connected the world of the gods to the world of nature. The movements of the sun and moon and the planets were images of eternity in time. The rhythms of nature, and of the body, were in harmony with them so that music and dance also partook of the eternal. Sir John Davies's long poem Orchestra, which was much admired by Queen Elizabeth I, elaborates this basic idea - that everything dances because dance is the best metaphor for life. I am reminded of Daniel Pratt's reference to Ashton's use of the whole body - "every elbow and eyelash". I love Davies's poem because he sees everything in terms of dance - All learned arts, and every great affair, A lively shape of dancing seems to bear. ... For what are breath, speech, echoes, music, winds, But dancings of the air, in sundry kinds? He also regards Eros as the guiding influence behind the dance: Kind nature first doth cause all things to love; Love makes them dance, and in just order move. Bridiem made a fascinating observation about Scenes de Ballet in the Triple Bill thread: "Ashton seems to be revealing the hidden structure of time, of the universe, of creation in his work." Another reason perhaps why Ashton belongs in the pantheon of great artists in whatever medium. As with the poets, he could see through literal reality to the metaphorical. He knew how to use the body's lines and angles and turns in space to reveal the hidden depths of soul.

Interesting responses - thank you. One thing I learn from this forum is the validity of one's own response to watching ballet. A fundamental trust in one's own responses to the arts gives the confidence to dig deeper. If I say that La Fille mal Gardee is the happiest work of art ever created, it is true according to my own response to it. I would have to reflect long and hard even to bring together comparisons across the arts. Matisse's paintings from Collioure after his breakthough into pure colour might be one. Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, perhaps. But I only have to bring into the mind's eye Widow Simone being cajoled into her clogs to break into a smile and sense a deep pleasure. Watching Ashton, I feel a profound sense of harmony. It is really not unlike the sensations involved when contemplating a Raphael. I would describe it as having one's being re-ordered, as if it has been out of sorts and needed to rediscover its place in the cosmos. On a mundane level, it is like asking a naive question - which comes out in a rather incoherent, inchoate fashion - of a beloved teacher who answers it by returning it in a crystal clear form, with an answer which affirms the desire for knowledge that underlay the original question. Going into the auditorium to see an Ashton ballet, I am in my usual muddle but emerge more alive, with new patterns of being. We could compare him with the composers who inspired him. Perhaps he recognised his own sensibility in theirs - Ravel, Liszt etc. I thought of Ashton when listening recently to Handel - the same combination of exuberance, steppy, skipping rhythms and piercing tragic melancholy. Or Henry Purcell. Yet for every ten people who have heard of Handel's Messiah, would there be even one who knows Symphonic Variations? I sometimes wish we had the same appreciation for beauty in the particulars of small scale arts that the Japanese have - ceramics here are still afflicted by the craft label, but there it is a highly valued art. The choreographic transformation of music into dance images in the hands of an artist such as Ashton is an art of such subtlety and beauty - how one dancer's line is often continued by another's, for example. It is a form of natural magic. Working with moods and atmospheres as he does is very close to the world of the dream. It makes me happy to speak in this way. I hope we can continue this thread a while longer.

The programme for the current Ashton triple bill includes an appreciative article by Mark Monahan, the Arts Editor and Chief Dance Critic of the Daily Telegraph, in which he states that Ashton created "a body of work as great as any across the entire artistic spectrum". I was rather moved by this, and it set me thinking - what are the qualities in Ashton's work which would mark him out as being in the first rank of the arts as a whole? The first thing which comes to mind is its seemingly effortless grace and nonchalence, which conceals all of the work which has gone into making it - a quality personified by the raised hands at the end of Rhapsody. It's the ease which you feel in front of a Raphael - as i did in the National Gallery the day before the triple bill. The very last painting in the Raphael exhibition is of his friend Baldassare Castiglione who coined a word for this nonchalence - sprezzatura - specifically to refer to the way the body moves in space. Another quality is the way Ashton fuses apparently opposite tendencies: as has been said before in this forum, his style is like a combination of "Isadora above the waist, Cecchetti below it". It's paradoxical - you have to put together inconsistencies - "abandoned precision" for example. It would be fascinating to think of other phrases of this kind. It is Shakespearean - combining the noble with the lowly, for example in Capriol Suite, the courtly and melancholy pavane with the knockabout, boisterous Mattachins dance for the men. In A Month in the Country, there is the episode of the lost keys. It's daft, but something else is going on: it is so well made that it conceals its metaphorical layers - finding and losing, searching like lost souls, being found by love, or found out, the rose, and so on. It's interesting that it's Natalia Petrovna who finds the keys. I'd also mention his work with myth. Myths and fairy tales show in personified forms the basic patterns of the imagination. Ashton was drawn to them throughout his career, whether they are implied as in Symphonic Variations or express such as with Daphnis and Chloe. Or the elements, literal, embodied, and metaphorical - as with Ondine, the water spirit. In antiquity and the Renaissance, it was a favourite topic of conversation to compare the qualities of the arts. Is poetry the chief of the arts, or painting, and why? they would enquire. Having been interested in the arts all of my life, and dabbled in them a bit myself, I know that classical ballet can speak in a way that no other art form can. Ashton's danced images have extraordinary power. They are dramatic, poetic, sculptural, figurative, musical - and yet more; perhaps they have another kind of reality, which we long for, but cannot name, only glimpse through our responses as we watch. I feel convinced that Monahan is right in his judgment, but struggle to express in words exactly why. I wonder what others think?

Reflecting on this thread I realise that the works I'd like to see were almost all made at least 20 years ago. It was after the RB started dancing William Forsythe that my interest in the company began to wane, so to speak. Some suggestions: Ashton Double Bill of A Wedding Bouquet and Daphnis and Chloe, with some divertissements like the newly mounted solo from Le Rossignol. Cinderella or Fille instead of Nutcracker over Christmas. (This used to happen before Peter Wright's new production of Nutcracker of the mid 1980s.) Triple Bills such as: Andree Howard, La Fete Etrange Antony Tudor, Dark Elegies Paul Taylor, Esplanade or Airs Ashton, Les Rendezvous Balanchine, Mozartiana or Le Tombeau de Couperin Macmillan Song of the Earth Ashton, Apparitions Any one-act Massine ballet (Clement Crisp and Mary Clarke recommended three in their "must-see" list in The Ballet Goer's Guide.) MacMillan, La fin du Jour or Solitaire I'd be interested in seeing more Pam Tanowitz - she has a sense of humour! Or Mark Morris.

Although it appears that the Ashton Rediscovered insight has been removed from the ROH Streaming site, it is still available on the Ashton Foundation website under the News and Events heading. Let's hope it stays there. A few further thoughts about Foyer de Danse. In David Vaughan's book he says it was inspired by Degas's paintings of the ballet. We can never know for sure but I think the ballet's genesis is more complex, and may have as much to do with his film work with Anthony Asquith, In the summer of 1931, while Ashton was performing Les Sylphides and other works for Rambert in a season at the Lyric Theatre, he and some Rambert dancers were also contributing to a film by Asquith which was released in June 1932 as "Dance Pretty Lady". In the film Ashton made some brief dance sequences described as pastiches of Les Sylphides which closely resemble moments in the adage from Foyer. The film is well worth watching. It concerns a love affair between a "stage door Johnnie" (compare the Abonne in Foyer) and a dancer in the corps. There are several scenes of dancers on and off stage, including some seen from the wings, or from above, which are reminiscent of Degas. Maybe Ashton got the idea for Foyer from Asquith's film rather than Degas's art. Or perhaps the film interested him in Degas, whose cropping is very film-like. Vaughan says Ashton heard Lord Berners' score of Luna Park as an interlude during the 1932 summer season, which was about the same time as Asquith's film came out. We can only speculate that when he heard the music, he made a connection with the dances he had made for Asquith the year before. In the film, some members of the corps are invited to a birthday party and affect surprise at a framed print of Botticelli's nude Birth of Venus on the wall. It's interesting that, according to Vaughan, Ashton choreographed this myth in his ballet Mercury for Markova with the Rambert company in June 1931. In my previous post I commented on the shell-like shaping of the dancers in the tableaux in the adage in Foyer, and I have the feeling that Ashton was drawing on the essence of what he had done for Markova in Mercury. Amusingly, in the film, the main girl character notices that her lover has an upholstered chair in the shape of a shell, connects it the Botticelli print, and steps on it in imitation of the picture! You can rent the film for £2.50 on the British Film Institute website. It lasts just over an hour, and also has a funny patriotic music hall dance which was also made for the film by Ashton. I like the film in particular because it evokes the world of the dancer in the early 1930s, and the manners and style of the age, which are lost to us, but which were essential background for Ashton's early work.

Thanks for the cautionary note. - maybe the link should be deleted? I can't do it myself now. I wasn't aware it was commercially available. It is so life-enhancing for Ashton lovers.

I've just been watching what could be called "the other Rhapsody" - the first part of "The Story of Three Loves", a film from 1953 by Gottfried Reinhardt and Vincente Minnelli. It stars Moira Shearer and James Mason - and Ashton's choreography to Rachmaninov's Rhapsody - but not as we know it from his later version for the RB. In the film, it is danced as a solo by Shearer, first when she thinks she is alone on stage in a lilac evening dress, later for Mason in a white dress. It lasts about 40 minutes. I may be wrong but it doesn't feel as if Ashton is just fulfilling a commission (he went to Hollywood to make it). It feels as if he was really responding to the music, and finding inspiration from it. Shearer is gorgeous throughout. If you're in need of a lift and some inspiration yourself, I recommend it. Something to add to the growing list for the Ashton Festival too!

So true. Having now become familiar with Hamlet and Ophelia, the Fisherman's solo, and the extract from Foyer de Danse I don't want to be parted from them. After repeated viewings of Foyer, I realise that it's worked on me like a slow burner. At first sight, it seemed attractive and "charming" but I wasn't sure how much substance there was in it. I was more taken by Hamlet and Ophelia. But the second time, I was struck by the floor patterns in the adage, how Ashton at first uses only four of the six coryphees and places the Etoile, the Markova role, in the centre of them. For the first two-thirds of the adage, we see numerous permutations of this pattern, until the music changes. We hear a fanfare and the ballet master goes down on one knee and supports her in an arabesque penchee. The other two coryphees join to create a line of movement which offers a shimmering background to the Etoile's lifts until the end. In later viewings, the variety of Ashton's choreography within these patterns becomes more apparent. There is an extraordinary refinement in the interlacing of the arms and hands (echoes of Botticelli's Primavera?), and in the shaping of the tableaux, hinting perhaps at a heart shape or a shell perhaps. The old alchemists said that "Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or super-celestial body." The way that Ashton writes for Markova implies that she is a distillation of his imagination, like a point at the centre of a square, from which everything comes. In this respect the adage reminds me of the opening of Balanchine's late work Mozartiana in which Suzanne Farrell is in the centre between two girl students on either side of her. The disparity in height implies she is a goddess among her nymphs. Going back to earlier posts, I discovered from the Rambert online archive that Foyer de Danse was not only performed at the Mercury Theatre. During the 1930s it was also performed at the Duchess Theatre and the Duke of York's Theatre in London and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Its last recorded performance was in 1943. I can easily see it at Sarasota, with the orchestral accompaniment!

I'm curious about the process of reconstructing a ballet from a film, especially one like Foyer de Danse, where there are no contemporaries left to ask how it was done. In the art world we hear about the difference between conservation which preserves a work in its original condition and restoration which could involve repairs, cleaning, and even a bit of creative work to deal with losses. In the case of Foyer de Danse, it seems there was just the silent film made by Marie Rambert which played at 2x actual speed and the music - "Luna Park" by Lord Berners. The process of turning these sources into a live performance goes way beyond any comparison with the art world. It is more like a transformation from one art form into another. Just superimposing the music for the Adagio (which lasts 4.14 on the recording I have) onto the Adage performed at the Insight evening (which lasts 3.20 minutes) suggests that Ashton may have cut the music for this section. If so, Ursula Hageli and Christopher Newton may have had some tricky decisions to make on where the cut or cuts should be. They must have become immersed in Ashton's creative process - essentially his musicality - when fitting music and movement together. The fact that what emerged "worked" on stage is a real tribute to their dedication. I'd love to learn more about the process. We speak about Ashton being inspired by Degas but he must have been strongly attracted to the music. It is a real ballet score - what we'd call a mash-up of styles, all of them danceable. In no particular order I noticed Strauss waltzes, Spanish rhythms, jazzy touches (eg muted trumpets), Stravinsky (think Petroushka), Tchaikovsky's music for Panorama scene and variations, even Elgar with his brassy orchestration and rising and falling sequences. The way parts move between sections reminds me of film music, and it's interesting that Berners did later write for film. The score of Luna Park was written to follow the scenario of a ballet by that name written by Kochno which to our sensibilities sounds faintly ludicrous. It's remarkable that Ashton must have seen the ballet (which was choreographed by Balanchine). jettisoned the story and seen through the music to his own images of Foyer de Danse. If you listen to the orchestral version, it's hard to go back to the piano reduction, even though that's what was used of necessity at the Mercury Theatre. Berners uses a sophisticated palette of orchestral colour which would beautifully enhance the ballet's movement quality. In the Insight of October 2019 Ursula Hageli said, "It's very clever, there's something moving all the time." The more I look at the adage the more I marvel at how subtly Ashton choreographs the Markova role in relation to her four coryphees. A real sense of flow, supported by some shimmering strings and horn fanfares. The Foundation may need to decide whether to stick with the piano score and a simplified staging or make the most of the opportunity and use the orchestral version, and have a set made which pays homage to the Mercury with its centrally placed staircase while enlarging the stage space perhaps with splayed sides. As it is I suspect the Linbury would be too wide and dancers may find themselves separating out to fill the space available.

Yes, I agree. Reviving the ballet from an old film is like restoring an old master painting - liberating it from layers of grime and yellowing varnish, and repairing losses as faithfully as possible. It's so exciting to see the end result - as in TV programmes like Fake or Fortune. The Ballet Club film is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abnA6-NJPg0 It looks odd because it plays at 2x real time speed. That would mean the complete ballet lasts over 16 minutes, of which the Foundation has shown only five - reversing the order of solo and adage for effect on the evening. I can understand why this segment was chosen: not only do they both show Markova's role but they include some of the work's most striking choreography. The way Ashton counterpoints Markova's role with the other four dancers in the adage - sometimes a beat behind, then accelerating - gives me a quietly ecstatic feeling. Perhaps it was also easier to mount given that they have little "character" content which otherwise is present throughout the ballet. In the complete version, the antics of the star, her admirer and the ballet master would make the adage when it comes all the more poetic. It was noticeable that the action is spread out across the stage, giving me the feeling at times of sparseness - too much space between the dancers and between them and the perimeter. A revival of the whole work would have to find a way of dealing with this, perhaps by making boundaries within the stage area of some kind. The benches placed frontally seem odd and I found the actions of the corps when resting which Ashton took from Degas - limbering, helping each other with ribbons, etc - more cute or demure than the casual, even uncouth gestures in the film, which are more in tune with the Degas's realism. Perhaps it's best to regard the presentation as a first go at a revival, raising questions on the staging for further reflection. A writer in the 1940s described Ashton's works made for the Mercury Theatre as "ballets intimes" - somehow Ashton used the limitations of space to his advantage. Does that intimate - even if crowded - atmosphere need to be carried forward more into the revival? There is also the point that the ballet is conceived as a class or partly a rehearsal taking place in a small studio, even that a staircase forms an important part in some of Degas's pictures. This wasn't the first time Ashton had been inspired by the visual arts. In A Florentine Picture (1930) he had taken groupings from Renaissance works such as Botticelli's Birth of Venus and brought pictures to life, evoking their springtime feelings of rebirth. With the work of Degas, he evokes the backstage world of the Paris Opera, and it's both amusing and touching to see Ashton as the ballet master in Foyer de Danse taking the place of Perrot who sometimes appears in Degas's ballet paintings. Ashton must have immersed himself in them as much as he did in the music to his ballets - and I wonder what he thought of the particular ways that Degas embodied movement, for example by employing preparatory or linking steps, or steps which unfold such as arabesque penchée (a point made in the catalogue to the exhibition in 2011 on "Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement") which appear in profusion in Foyer de Danse. There may also be a link in Ashton's mind to Nijinska who describes movement as "the secret of thinking and acting between positions". The unusual angles and cropping in Degas coupled with his focus on incomplete or transitional steps and dancers adjusting their costume or their hair enhances his quest for a visual art which is not static or two-dimensional. With Ashton, as well as his wit and humour, style and beauty, there is for me something else - a quest or an obsession or a longing which is akin to Degas's desire to go beyond the apparent limitations of his chosen medium. With A Florentine Picture and Foyer de Danse, Ashton is immersing himself in visual images which through his choreography come to life in a third dimension, as if he as artist is the key to unlocking them, or unfreezing them. I like to think he was responding to the spirit of rebirth that still lived in the paintings. It's an aspect of Ashton's work which comes close to natural magic - from the statue of Eros in Sylvia coming down from his plinth, to characters stepping out of portraits in Apparitions, to still figures in Symphonic Variations or Valses Nobles et Sentimentales dissolving their poses and moving out into space, and so on. All are also metaphors of transformation with emotional and spiritual overtones: in the practice room, something new is coming to life - dance as life - and there is no clear distinction between an enchainment as part of a class and a sequence of steps in a ballet, as in Markova's solo. Similarly, in the studio, dancers sprawl about and adjust their hair in the same space as they practise their pliés. The ROH Ashton Rediscovered stream is only available until 24 December. It would be good to see it permanently available on the Foundation's website. In time - perhaps for the Ashton Festival - I'd suggest another evening devoted solely to Foyer de Danse. It could begin with a re-mastered version of the film in real time so we can savour the dancing of Markova and Ashton himself, followed with an account of the many decisions that had to be made to make the revival viable today, and end with the first complete performance in nearly 100 years!

Maybe someone will write a book one day on how so many Ashton ballets came to be lost, and how some of those that survived just lost their sparkle for later generations. It would doubtless be a depressing read. But we are where we are, and I derive some encouragement that the Foundation was making "early plans" with the RB for a festival of some sort until Covid struck. All that concerns me is to see more Ashton ballets performed, and more often. Whether it's kick-started by a festival or "an Ashton season", or an anniversary (it's only five years until the 100th anniversary of his first ballet, A Tragedy of Fashion), doesn't matter. I have some faith in the Foundation's capability to keep a watching brief on future revivals. And it is also true that the RB has "pulled the rabbit out of the hat" in recent years on some productions. It just feels touch and go whether future productions will work or not. I've been looking again at Capriol Suite (1930), as presented by New York Theatre Ballet: Living Room Series | New York Theatre Ballet (nytb.org) It's a work I turn to when in need of some good cheer. I think it has three enduring qualities which can give cause for optimism as far as the future of Ashton's ballets in general is concerned: 1. It is perfectly constructed. The ballets which have survived all share this characteristic whether one thinks of economy of means, simplicity and inevitability of steps, musicality, coherence of music, design and choreography, and so on. 2. It demonstrates a complete and utter joy in dancing - stamping, lifting, shaping - and a deep connection with the historical roots of dance. 3. It is all about love - requited, unrequited, easy, difficult - and has a gentle wit and humour which is life-enhancing. These aspects will never cease to be "relevant" to human beings. You can hear how the New York audience enjoyed it. Sarasota showed how a small company could put on a four-day festival, powered by love for the work. The only thing I'd add is that it's wise not to get caught up in states of powerlessness brought on by RB doublethink (praising the Foundation for reviving Ashton rarities while actually creating more of them by under- or non-performance, for example). Something in me is convinced that the Ashton ballets will live on, just as you cannot kill the goddess Aphrodite.