Ashton Rediscovered - ROH 27 October 2021

[Dawnstar]

I found this interesting & enjoyable to watch, though due to the relative brevity I'm glad I didn't try to attend the event itself. My main take-away thoughts were 1) some of Ashton's choreography is more modern than I realised & 2) based on the Hamlet piece, the next time the RB does Mayerling they really need to cast Bracewell as Prince Rudolf!

[Jamesrhblack]

This was such a joy.

 

Was MacMillan inspired for Mayerling (1978) by some of Ashton’s Hamlet (1977) hand to floor images?

 

I so love Ashton’s Swan Lake PDQ (joyous memories still of Wendy Ellis, Rosalyn Whitten, Michael Batchelor and Stephen Beagley) and was delighted to see Leo Dixon and Joseph Sissens in this.

 

Kudos all round.

[FLOSS]

I sometimes think that Ashton the "classical choreographer " is much more a construct created by the company management by limiting the range of his output which it chooses to stage than an accurate reflection of the range of his choreographic output . It is almost as if the main purpose of constructing this idea of Ashton as the creator of safe charming "heritage works" is intended to enhance the carefully tended image of MacMillan as a rebel  at odds with the choreographic old guard in his effort to expand the range of subject matter which ballet might be permitted to tackle. The need to sustain this image of MacMillan as the rebel innovator at all costs would also go a long way to explain the absence of his most obviously classically based works from the stage.

 

The Lynn Wake film is both tantalising and saddening since it really brings home how much has already been lost  and how much we are still in danger of losing through a mixture of the legatees' failure to co-operate in the past; the company's preference for working with a small group of in-house coaches  rather than dancers who had been part of the creative process or had at least been coached by Ashton in the ballets being staged and the decision made soon after Ashton's death to give MacMillan's works more stage time and reduce that allocated to staging Ashton's ballets which Jeremy Isaacs describes in his autobiography. I know that Ashton reportedly said on a number of occasions that his works would not long outlast him but it does seem on occasion as if he and his original legatees almost went out of their way to ensure that this prophecy would be fulfilled through a collective lack of foresight and sheer bloody mindedness on the part of at least one of those involved. 

 

I don't think that the problem is a lack of stage time at Covent Garden but a lack of interest in staging Ashton on the part of the current management. Management can always find time for the things that that interest it. For those in charge at Sarasota  reviving Ashton ballets is a labour of love, at Covent Garden it is a chore. Management does not have to devote forty per cent of the stage time available to it to two ballets, it chooses to do so. In the same way it chooses to give virtually everyone in the most senior ranks of the company an opportunity to give us their Romeo and their Juliet. It does not have to so this but in choosing to allocate stage time in this way it creates a situation in which there is a contest for the remaining stage time between new creations and the old repertory which management does not regard as essential to the development of the company's dancers or its artistic identity. If you decide that this is the best way to allocate stage time you end up with dancers who want to dance MacMillan's ballets largely because they are familiar with them but lack a solid grounding in the choreographic style of the company's founder choreography or a real familiarity with his output. It also adversely affects the company's Diaghilev repertory which contains works which were of sufficient importance to both Ashton and MacMillan for them to ensure that they were revived frequently enough to ensure that there was an effective chain of transmission and they did not wither and die through neglect.

 

[MargaretN7]

22 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

.............................., the next time the RB does Mayerling they really need to cast Bracewell as Prince Rudolf!

Yes, you are not the only one to think that. 

[alison]

Indeed not.

[LinMM]

It does seem pretty crazy to me that the RB wouldn't use an artist who helped to create a role for coaching it  if it was possible! You can’t get much closer to the original choreographer of a Piece than that! 
Definitely a bit strange why would you lose such unique expertise. 
 

 

[maryrosesatonapin]

On 24/11/2021 at 20:44, Dawnstar said:

I found this interesting & enjoyable to watch, though due to the relative brevity I'm glad I didn't try to attend the event itself. My main take-away thoughts were 1) some of Ashton's choreography is more modern than I realised & 2) based on the Hamlet piece, the next time the RB does Mayerling they really need to cast Bracewell as Prince Rudolf!

I immediately thought of Edward Watson when I saw the Hamlet choreography.  Maybe Bracewell can be our new Watson.

[Two Pigeons]

5 hours ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

I immediately thought of Edward Watson when I saw the Hamlet choreography.  Maybe Bracewell can be our new Watson.

 

 

For me Bracewell has always been the natural heir to Dowell.

[bridiem]

From what I've seen so far, Bracewell has qualities reminiscent of a number of great past dancers; but, like all great dancers, what is exciting about him is that he is uniquely himself.

[JennyTaylor]

I must admit that I thought about Ed Watson after I watched Will Bracewell in Hamlet, but now I can also empathise with the Anthony Dowell comment. I’m also so pleased that it’s not just me who sees special qualities because I question myself all the time as to whether or not, I am just going starry eyed. That’s also the case because I find it very difficult to describe what I find special about him every time I see him perform. What I do know is that the first time I saw him perform was as Siegfried in Swan Lake and I came with no preconceptions. I was just interested in seeing a new up and coming dancer perform a major role. From the moment he saluted ironically to Von Rothbart my attention was caught and subsequently 
I was lost. Yet he is not showy, there appears to be no ego: he is just the most beautiful dancer who also has the gift of being able to characterise each role he plays uniquely. He also appears to be able to build wonderful rapport with his ballerinas. 
 

I will shut up now.

[alison]

9 hours ago, maryrosesatonapin said:

I immediately thought of Edward Watson when I saw the Hamlet choreography.  Maybe Bracewell can be our new Watson.

 

I said that at his graduation performance, when he was in Lilac Garden - or Jardin aux Lilas, whichever they called it.  Not that there can be a "new" Watson, Dowell or whoever, but you know what I mean - I was referring to his acting potential more than anything, I think.

 

3 hours ago, bridiem said:

From what I've seen so far, Bracewell has qualities reminiscent of a number of great past dancers; but, like all great dancers, what is exciting about him is that he is uniquely himself.

 

Indeed.  And hopefully we will get to discover more of what's exciting about him in the not-too-distant future.

[Dawnstar]

12 minutes ago, alison said:

Indeed.  And hopefully we will get to discover more of what's exciting about him in the not-too-distant future.

 

I hope he manages to stay uninjured. I really liked him in Winter Dreams (that was quite funny: it was only the 2nd time I'd seen the RB live so, with so many of the men in uniform, I didn't know which character was supposed to be which until Edmonds killed Bracewell, I just knew if I was Naghdi I would have definitely gone for Bracewell!) & then saw him replacing Bonelli as the Nutcracker Prince. Then he was off for what must have been nearly a year & I saw him in Dances At A Gathering then covid. So I feel like I've hardly seen him do anything. His RB Romeo debut last month was the first 3-act ballet I've seen him lead. Now looking forward to seeing him in SL next March.

[Scheherezade]

5 hours ago, JennyTaylor said:

I must admit that I thought about Ed Watson after I watched Will Bracewell in Hamlet, but now I can also empathise with the Anthony Dowell comment. I’m also so pleased that it’s not just me who sees special qualities because I question myself all the time as to whether or not, I am just going starry eyed. That’s also the case because I find it very difficult to describe what I find special about him every time I see him perform. What I do know is that the first time I saw him perform was as Siegfried in Swan Lake and I came with no preconceptions. I was just interested in seeing a new up and coming dancer perform a major role. From the moment he saluted ironically to Von Rothbart my attention was caught and subsequently 
I was lost. Yet he is not showy, there appears to be no ego: he is just the most beautiful dancer who also has the gift of being able to characterise each role he plays uniquely. He also appears to be able to build wonderful rapport with his ballerinas. 
 

I will shut up now.

I so agree, Jenny. That Siegfried performance was what hooked me, too. I wasn’t expecting to be wowed but, my goodness, was I impressed! And have never failed to be impressed since. There is a poetry to his dancing and I just love it. 

[Rina]

The performance of Hamlet and Ophelia is still online, hopefully the ROH and the Ashton Foundation will not take it down. At 13 minutes it is quite a substantial work, and repays repeated viewings. A few things strike me.

 

Towards the end, Ophelia mimes giving a ring to Hamlet. I imagine she is returning  it to him - a sign that they had been secretly betrothed. This gesture - which is not in the play - indicates that we are seeing Ashton's Ophelia - his imaginative presentation of Shakespeare's archetypal character through Liszt's musical forms. Her brokenness and unbalancing after Hamlet's final rejection may hint at her madness in the play, but if so it suggests it was not brought on only by her father's murder at Hamlet's hand, or her treatment by him, but by a close affinity with Hamlet - his volatile swinging between living and dying - expressed in "To be or not to be". But this bond seems to involve painful separations. At the outset, we see them emerging from the darkness, she standing upstage left, he lying prone downstage right, on a diagonal. There is a gulf between them, measured by the whole depth of the stage. In the first minute, she is solo, seemingly yearning for him with sensitive ports de bras and arabesques, while he seems self-absorbed, looking out perhaps at that "undiscovered country" of after-death which he fears could be even worse than his present life.

 

After she leaves, he remains on the ground for a further minute until the music becomes louder with a rising motif, with brass and timpani. His solo (4 minutes) is marked by abrupt jumps and turns, which give the impression of being manipulated by hostile, unseen forces. When Ophelia returns, he watches her as she continues as before, her lyrical movements suggesting a constancy he lacks, until he frightens her with manic jumps from side to side, causing her to protect her face with her hands and arms. The mood changes suddenly when he gently parts her hands and looks on her face and kisses her. For a while, they dance together, sometimes mirroring each other's movement, an indication that their souls are one, but this is short-lived as Hamlet is overtaken by rejecting, pushing away gestures, culminating in his standing, arm outstretched, pointing offstage left: "Get thee to a nunnery."  Ophelia disintegrates, her feet broken, as if she is imploding, she returns the ring and exits (Fonteyn conveys absolute desperation and hopelessness at this point in the film). She re-enters as a shade crossing the stage and Hamlet is left alone as Liszt's brooding music suggests  an inexorable fate is tightening its grip on him, as he crawls and scratches the stage, utterly lost.

 

Liszt's music is marked by frequent short silences which are disruptive and create an edgy atmosphere. For Ophelia alone he uses woodwind and solo violin (also after the kiss) and gentle questioning chords. It's Hamlet who brings jabbing, staccato chords, and turbulent rising and falling phrases. I can't think of a pdd quite like it. The 4 minute solo given to Hamlet before the pdd unbalances the work, but this seems emblematic of their relationship. He fills the silences with poses, indicative of his paralysis perhaps. Then he seems attacked by resolution with repeated, manic jumps. The pdd seems dominated by Hamlet's mood swings on which Ophelia is dependent - with feelings of mutual love flaring up but quickly going out - as if when going into hold she doesn't know whether he will be loving or hating. Ashton doesn't follow Shakespeare's text but there are resonances which could be discussed, for example Hamlet's gestures at the end bring to mind the line "crawling between earth and heaven" (Act 3, Scene 1, line 128), and when his hands are close to his brow ("And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"). Although that would be interesting, I think the choreography speaks through its own images. I'd like to see Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell given the chance to deepen their interpretations, and other actor-dancers dance it too.

[art_enthusiast]

On 27/11/2021 at 23:26, alison said:

 

I said that at his graduation performance, when he was in Lilac Garden - or Jardin aux Lilas, whichever they called it.  Not that there can be a "new" Watson, Dowell or whoever, but you know what I mean - I was referring to his acting potential more than anything, I think.

 

 

Indeed.  And hopefully we will get to discover more of what's exciting about him in the not-too-distant future.

Definitely. I loved his performance as Romeo with Fumi Kaneko, just incredible. Very evocative acting from both of them.

[FLOSS]

I can not bring myself to criticise the Foundation for wanting to congratulate itself for surviving its first ten years after the problems it had in getting started so I fear I might seem a little churlish in complaining that it has not managed to achieve more during that time. I have already written on the Ashton Festival thread about the institutional difficulties that anyone endeavouring to restore the Ashton repertory faces as far as the Royal Ballet is concerned which includes the director's  own ambitions for the company's repertory. I recognise that MacMillan is currently regarded by most of the company's dancers as the greatest choreographer who ever lived because of the "deep" subjects he chooses to put on stage in his works but I can'r help wishing that the Foundation's work over the past ten years had managed to achieve a bit more than a one night only compendium of snippets from ballets on which, for the most part, it has run insight events plus the full Hamlet Prelude now renamed Hamlet and Ophelia.

 

The first question has to be will we be allowed to see Hamlet and Ophelia again before 2031? The second has to be, if it is programmed again between now and the company's centenary will it be cast with such consummate care or will it fall victim to the tone deaf, anyone can do anything, approach to casting which places far greater importance on giving dancers something to do than on ensuring that the strongest case possible is made for a rarely performed work which is in the process of being eased to the repertory? I understand that management has to keep its dancers occupied and, as far as possible,happy but there are occasions on which the need to assemble the right cast has to be the priority which means selecting dancers best suited to the roles which the ballet contains, regardless of their rank, is the only approach to the take. I think that management made an extremely good job of its 2019 revival of Enigma Variations in three casts there was only one dancer who in my opinion was badly miscast which was a vast improvement on the company's most recent revival of the work. If from now on every Ashton revival is cast and coached with such care I shall be very happy. The main points to be remembered is that Ashton, like Tudor, does not require an overlay of acting as the characters are depicted in the choreography, and all his ballets require is that the choreography be reproduced as faithfully as possible.

 

 The entire evening was devoted to works which have either been restored to the stage since the turn of the century or works which the Foundation has worked on at its insight events. I remember in the late 1990's hearing Anthony Russell Roberts, Ashton's nephew, at an LBC meeting declare Sylvia,Dante Sonata and Foyer de Danse irretrievably lost. The first two "lost ballets"have been successfully restored to the stage and on the basis of what we were shown at the insight vent on Foyer de Danse there is no reason why the same thing should not happen with that ballet as  well. If only there was the same will to stage these works as there is at Sarasota. One of the most interesting aspects of the work of the Foundation has been Kevin's generosity towards it in terms of making dancers available to assist in its work and his failure, apart from this gala, to provide stage time for it.

 

I  was pleased to see the excerpt from Foyer de Danse performed with Zambon in the Markova role. Zambon had stepped in at very short notice at the insight event at which we saw the results of the choreographic archaeology undertaken on the filmed record of the ballet and it would have been grossly unfair to see her replaced by someone more senior and possibly far less suitable. The work shows is a young Ashton working for Ballet Club in 1932 with a really experienced, exceptionally well trained dancer making a ballet for the pocket handkerchief sized stage of the Mercury Theatre which had no wings. I was more than a little disappointed that we did not see the ballet in its entirety as the film record  is all but complete, only the dancers' entrances and exits were not filmed. As the only way on and  off the stage at the Mercury was via a staircase which features in so many pictorial records of the theatre patching the ballet to provide the dancers' exits and entrances should not be an insurmountable problem. An insight event on Ashton choreographing for Markova  with someone like Geraldine Morris delivering the talk with choreographic demonstrations followed by performances of Facade, Foyer de Danse and Les Rendezvous would tempt me to part with my money

 

If the first excerpt showed the audience Ashton working in an obviously classical style evoking the lost world of the dancers depicted by Degas the second from Dante Sonata from 1940 should have shown us atypical Ashton working in a style that owes a great deal to Isadora Duncan. Now while I am pleased to see anything from Dante Sonata the short section selected was much closer to what we perceive of as typical Ashton than the bulk of its choreography is. This to me seemed like a lost opportunity to reveal Ashton's emotional range as a choreographer. Ashton's wartime ballet reflects the strange unsettling world in which it was created. For me the distraught breast beating solo danced in bare feet with loose hair which I believe Ashton made for Pamela May as one of the Children of Light comes much closer to capturing the work's essential unsettling strangeness than the relatively placid pas de deux created for Fonteyn and Somes we were shown. I hope that we are given the opportunity to see the entire ballet as we were promised last season.

 

Then came the short excerpt from the third act of Sylvia which should reveal Sylvia dancing in the grand style having been transformed from nymph to ballerina. Even as an excerpt this solo should be approached as the culmination of a performance and danced in the style of the great nineteenth century imperial ballerinas. Unfortunately O'Sullivan did not seem quite up to the task and came across as ingratiating rather than grand.

 

This was followed by an excerpt from the pas de quatre which Ashton created for Helpmann's 1963 production of Swan Lake. This is a piece of choreography which I would restore to the current production, if I had the power to do so, along with all the other Ashton interpolations that survived as part of the Royal's Swan Lake well into the 1980's.

We saw the men's pas de deux which seemed a bit too careful and insufficiently buoyant. When Ashmole and Eagling danced it there was always a sense wanting to display the choreography so that it was exciting and shone. In this performance it all seemed a bit underwhelming, cautious and flat. 

 

The Fairy of Joy first saw the light of day in Sir Peter Wright's 1968 production of Sleeping Beauty. Gasparini danced it beautifully but I have never understood quite why it had part of an Insight event devoted to it when there are other more worthwhile pieces of Ashton's choreography to work on.

 

The Fisherman's solo from Le Rossignole was beautifully danced by Ball. It is a wonderful piece of choreography which we are unlikely to see in its theatrical context, a performance of the Stravinsky opera, because of the cost of staging it. This is the same argument advanced to justify its neglect of major works like Daphnis and Chloe, Les Noces and the Song of the Earth. Having been freed from unwittingly subsidising the opera company which it did for years because of the way in which the costs of the ballet and opera companies were aggregated and then apportioned on the basis of the number of performances each company had given, the ballet now only has to cover its own costs. The problem is that now that management is fully aware of the cost of staging each ballet in the repertory the price tag attached to reviving Daphnis or Les Noces seems to act as a huge disincentive to staging them. 

 

The live performances ended with Hamlet and Ophelia danced by Hayward and Bracewell in a completely idiomatic and wonderfully unforced manner. Hayward captures the lyricism and expressiveness of Ashton's choreography and makes everything look as normal and natural as breathing. Bracewell was just as natural and effective as Hamlet. A bit  like in a Tudor ballet such as Jardin aux Lilas, Ashton's choreography is not about them as dancers but about them and the characters they are portraying and for that reason the technique which underpins their movements must look non-existent. Both succeed in giving every movement they dance the meaning that is to be found in the choreography when performed with an understanding of the innate relationship between the music and the movement and meaning which Ashton has attached to it. I can not make up my mind as to whether these two dancers are essentially throwbacks or whether it is the fact that they have both passed through the entire RBS training system which explains their affinity for this sort of choreography. It can't be simply the fact that the school places a premium on expressive dancing and gives awards for it that explains the special quality that they both bring to Ashton's choreography in performance. They were both outstanding in the 2019 revival of Enigma Variations in which Hayward gave a wonderfully idiomatic account of Sibley's role of Dorabella and Bracewell gave an equally compelling account of Dowell's role of Troyte.

 

 

 

[Dawnstar]

5 hours ago, FLOSS said:

I think that management made an extremely good job of its 2019 revival of Enigma Variations in three casts there was only one dancer who in my opinion was badly miscast which was a vast improvement on the company's most recent revival of the work.

 

I'm now decidedly curious as to who that one dancer may have been....!

[Rina]

On 12/12/2021 at 14:28, FLOSS said:

I  was pleased to see the excerpt from Foyer de Danse performed with Zambon in the Markova role. Zambon had stepped in at very short notice at the insight event at which we saw the results of the choreographic archaeology undertaken on the filmed record of the ballet and it would have been grossly unfair to see her replaced by someone more senior and possibly far less suitable. The work shows is a young Ashton working for Ballet Club in 1932 with a really experienced, exceptionally well trained dancer making a ballet for the pocket handkerchief sized stage of the Mercury Theatre which had no wings. I was more than a little disappointed that we did not see the ballet in its entirety as the film record  is all but complete, only the dancers' entrances and exits were not filmed.

 

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!

 

[Lynette H]

There's an article in Dance Tabs specifically about the Foyer de Danse reconstruction. I think I remember from the Foundation Masterclass that Ursula Hageli said that they had managed to reconstruct all but a few bars. 

 

https://dancetabs.com/2019/11/ashton-rediscovered-masterclass-foyer-de-danse-and-the-le-papillon-solo/

 

 

[Emeralds]

I enjoyed the recording on YouTube immensely! I liked all of it- couldn’t pick one or two that I liked more than the rest. Very impressed by the dancers preparing all the brilliant performances while they were preparing and dancing many other roles on the main stage in the same month. I wish the Royal Ballet could perform more Ashton works too. Every time they seem to programme the ones that many people like (Sylvia, Les Patineurs, A Month in the Country) for the very very shortest runs and mostly on inconvenient dates (lots of week nights)....sigh. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Emeralds

[Lizbie1]

I often read that Britten operas don't sell well, and that was given as a reason for their absence from the ROH stage under Kasper Holten; yet the recent Billy Budd and Death in Venice runs at ROH sold out notably quickly, faster than more "popular" and starrily cast operas in the same seasons.

 

I sometimes wonder if the same reputation afflicts Ashton at ROH and if put to the test whether it would hold up. The only Ashton ballets in recent seasons that sold slowly in my recollection were the more recent Two Pigeons double bill (too soon after the previous one? not well paired?) and Fille a few years back (again, possibly too soon after the previous run - and all the opening ballets in recent seasons have sold poorly, probably more so than Fille).

 

Or am I misremembering?

[Fonty]

Many of these ballets appear to need "intimate" staging.  Why can't performances of these works be scheduled for the Linbury?

[Emeralds]

3 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

I often read that Britten operas don't sell well, and that was given as a reason for their absence from the ROH stage under Kasper Holten; yet the recent Billy Budd and Death in Venice runs at ROH sold out notably quickly, faster than more "popular" and starrily cast operas in the same seasons.

 

I sometimes wonder if the same reputation afflicts Ashton at ROH and if put to the test whether it would hold up. The only Ashton ballets in recent seasons that sold slowly in my recollection were the more recent Two Pigeons double bill (too soon after the previous one? not well paired?) and Fille a few years back (again, possibly too soon after the previous run - and all the opening ballets in recent seasons have sold poorly, probably more so than Fille).

 

Or am I misremembering?

The 2 shows of The Two Pigeons I attended weren’t sold out but were over 95% full, which is much better than a lot of the well known operas. Sylvia sold out quicker than many runs of Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty! Yet many triple bills of  contemporary choreographers sell less well than Ashton but get more performances, and they don’t have 3 casts, just two, so it’s a bit baffling. I’ve never seen Fille not approach 98% to 99% sales on the day, even if they might be slow to sell initially. It’s very popular among families....and Classic FM fans. 😀

[Rina]

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.

 

 

[Fonty]

2 hours ago, Rina said:

 

 

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.

 

 

  Well, bunch 'em up in the middle then!  Maybe a few strategically placed seats (perhaps with member of the public sitting on them?) could narrow the stage down?  Seriously though, surely it is not beyond the capabilities of the people staging it to come up with a creative solution to create the space required.  

On the topic of music, I don't care for the idea of any ballet being danced to a piano score if the original was choreographed to a full orchestral version.  But if that is the only possibility then I will settle for that.  

[Guest oncnp]

Reminder that the ROH program comes off YouTube tomorrow 23 December

 

Insights: Ashton Rediscovered (roh.org.uk)

[alison]

Aagh.  Something else I have to find the time to watch  

[Mary]

Thanks for the reminder- I have re watched it and was thrilled once again by Hamlet and Ophelia with  Bracewell and Hayward = pure magic, (and it is super to see Wayne Eagling again) and Ball's fisherman too. A great programme, I wish I had a dvd of it.

 

The excitement, beauty, emotional truth,  and drama of much of Ashton's choreography really does stand out and make me think yet again- why are we not seeing more of this.

 

[Rina]

3 minutes ago, Mary said:

The excitement, beauty, emotional truth,  and drama of much of Ashton's choreography really does stand out and make me think yet again- why are we not seeing more of this.

 

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!

 

[Rina]

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.

 

[Mona]

The Ashton Rediscovered recording seems to be still available on the ROH youtube channel. Looks like it was removed only from the ROH website. 

I really enjoyed watching it and fully agree with all the praise for Ball, Bracewell and Hayward. 

[Jan McNulty]

Hello Mona and welcome to the Forum!