Sarasota Ballet's Ashton season

[alison]

From this week's links, some news, among other things, of Sarasota's Ashton season, which sounds highly tempting:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/arts/dance/british-ingenuity-delivered-by-americans.html?_r=1&

[John Mallinson]

And you may note that Margaret Barbieri and Ian Webb are participants in the Ashton Symposium on September 22nd.

[Bruce Wall]

Would that some of the Sarasota specialties could be brought to Sadler's Wells for a showing

Edited September 9, 2013 by Meunier

[alison]

Yes indeed.  Know anyone who might be able to sponsor it?

[Bruce Wall]

Well, I would have thought, Alison, that a segment of SW's funding to help support co-productions might have been aimed in this direction .... but then ....   

 

I wonder if there are restrictions in other (to be read: foreign) companies showing Ashton's work within a certain limit of the Royal Ballet's home.  (I'm only asking as I can't myself remember seeing a non-British company for several decades doing Ashton in London ... other than the Schaufuss pick-up troupe doing Ashton's R&J which, of course, Schaufuss was responsible for bringing to ENB while he was director there and knowing that the original production had been staged for his parents in Denmark.)   Certainly many foreign companies (including the Royal Ballet, Mariinsky and Bolshoi) have presented Balanchine immediately across the the plaza from NYCB's home, the (then) NY State now Koch Theatre.

 

It would have been wonderful if NYCB had been able to piece together and bring - even as a one off - Les Illuminations during their last visit to London in 2008 (after a quarter of a century's absence).  That ballet had, of course, been originally mounted with Ballet Society in New York prior to Ashton deciding to more permanently lodge the enormity of his gift in the UK.  (That noted, Ashton himself said that he felt he was often more appreciated in America than in the UK.  I know this as I heard him say it himself when I attended a talk he gave at the Joffrey School whist the main company (The Joffrey Ballet that is) was doing Wedding Bouquet and Fille at City Centre oh, so many years ago now.  (The Joffrey hold a large canvas of the Ashton rep in their history.)  That talk was graciously free and oh, so eagerly attended ... but those were, of course, different times.) 

Edited September 10, 2013 by Meunier

[alison]

I can't imagine there'd be any restrictions: it's not as if the RB present enough of Ashton's work to be a challenge, and just because New York companies do such things it doesn't necessarily mean there's a moratorium in the UK, too.   I'd have thought it was more of a commercial decision: assuming that the companies do enough of his work, and to a high enough standard, that they would even consider it in the first place.