Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations

[Kate Holmes]

Does anyone know a link or website where I can find at least 8 minutes or Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations in pretty good quality. I am doing a dance studies presentation and I really need a clip to use to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Any help would be great - thanks so much

[capybara]

There's a Royal Ballet DVD/Blu Ray.

[jmhopton]

It's part of a triple bill with The Dream and Marguerite and Armand.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ashton-Ballets-Various-Opus-OA1264D/dp/B07DSJ666F/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=the+dream+ballet&qid=1555577413&s=dvd&sr=1-16

[alison]

Welcome to the forum, Kate.  I hope that's solved your problem.

[FLOSS]

Kate, if you have time I would recommend that you search out the recording of the full ballet performed as part of the Queen's Silver Jubilee Gala held at the ROH. The film is somewhat murky and would not be any good if you need to show it to others as part of your presentation but it is well worth watching if you want to learn about the ballet in performance during Ashton's lifetime after Nureyev's influence had been assimilated by the company. The cast is led by Park and Wall. It is a strong one as most of the cast had been dancing the ballet on and off for the previous ten years. I think that only Eagling is a newcomer. Ashton would have selected the cast and coached them and that has a great impact on the quality of the performance you see. In this performance the ballet it is not merely the beautifully modulated elegant piece that it so often seems to be when performed by dancers on a flying visit to Ashton's vision of the celestial, or something more. The current craze for overly intrusive camerawork prevents you watching the ballet which Ashton created and intended it to be seen as an expression of the sublime. Symphonic Variations like every other ballet Ashton created is a work of choreographic surprises and in this case one of real emotional depth. I leave it to you to decide whether it contains a bit where Ashton "goes completely mad" which Dowell insists is to be found in every work he made.

 

In this recording as in the one made for Granada  a year later which had a cast led by Sibley and Dowell you get a feeling for the work's inherent theatricality, beginning with the impact of the central man's first movements, after the choreographer has built up the tension by keeping the audience waiting while the women dance and later the point at which the sideman, Coleman, performs off centre turns gazing to heaven. I think that the recording reveals the ballet's theatrical impact  because the dancers selected were already steeped in Ashton's style and were able to dance his choreography naturally and idiomatically ; they had almost certainly been coached by Somes with Ashton providing the finishing touches with what in filmed coaching sessions appeared to be minor, inessential "nit picking" corrections most of which involved almost imperceptible changes to how dancers held themselves  and how they moved. These corrections transformed good performances into ones which dazzled with the beauty and emotional depth which they brought to dancers' performances. But I suspect that the real secret is that the camera was far more static in 1977 than in later in-house filmed accounts of the ballet which means you see the work as a whole as Ashton intended rather than in the cameraman's cut. Somehow the early recordings seem to dwell on those aspects of a ballet which an audience was likely to want to watch rather than the somewhat arbitrary selections served up in modern recordings. Who knows,perhaps in 1977 Ashton gave instructions about how his ballet should be filmed. 

 

As the curtains open the dancers are, left to right, Eagling, Wall and Coleman. The women are Jenner, Park and Penney.The cast were Ashton dancers who had been immersed  in  Ashton's choreographic style from the day they entered the company. As Collier said in a recent interview at that time everyone in the company was an Ashton dancer because his choreography was ubiquitous. Dancers performed his choreography when they appeared in works he had created and when they danced the two most frequently performed of the nineteenth century classics, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty both of which contained divertissements and additional choreography by him. 

 

There is a BBC  recording of the triple bill danced in 2007 when Bussell retired. The the middle section of the programme was a performance of Symphonic Variations. Part of the performance can be found on YouTube. It preserves a performance given by a cast headed by Marquez and Bonelli. It is largely of interest because of the performances of the two side women Hatley and Morera two dancers who like the entire 1977 cast had Ashton in their DNA. The men are Ondiviela, Bonelli and McRae the women are Hatley. Marquez and Morera. The problem for me with the cast on the recommended DVD is not everyone dances Ashton as idiomatically as I would like to see. In my eyes it is a good rather than a great performance  but that, I recognise , is a matter of personal taste.  

 

Something which may be of interest to you is a comment made by Anita Young who danced with the company during the 1970's and now teaches at the RBS. She said that when she watches Symphonic Variations she knows its choreographic source as everything in it comes straight out of the Cecchetti method of classical ballet but she can't work out how Ashton managed to transform the familiar classroom steps, positions and poses into something which is such a perfect expression of the music that you can't imagine any other choreography set to it.

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by FLOSS

[Guest]

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by Darlex

[Guest]

http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/collections/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/9215

[alison]

Wow, thank you Darlex!

[Kate Holmes]

Thank you very much everyone for your sudgestions. Very much appreciated 🙂