The Royal Ballet, Ashton Celebrated, ROH

More than perhaps anyone else, Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988) was key to the development of the style of British ballet. Appointed company choreographer by Ninette de Valois in 1935, he went on to become director of The Royal Ballet, for which he created many works with a wider range of tonalities, but all characterised by elegance, technical precision and a particular, immediately identifiable use of the upper body.

Now The Royal Ballet launches the Ashton Worldwide 2024-2028 festival, organised by the Ashton Foundation to celebrate the choreographer's legacy, with two programmes that illustrate the genius of the man, and bring to the stage seminal works side by side with others which are not so frequently performed.

The two programmes will alternate. Programme One (6 - 19 June) consists of Les Rendez-Vous, The Dream and Rhapsody.

Programme Two (7 – 22 June) keeps The Dream and Rhapsody but has a middle section consisting of three shorter, rarer pieces.

The Dream is one of Ashton's most delightful pieces. A magisterial one Act distillation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, set to music by Mendelssohn, it is at once lyrical, witty and magical, seamlessly blending the worlds of fairies and mortals.


Francesca Hayward as Titania, Marcelino Sambé as Oberon in The Dream © 2017 ROH Photo: Tristram Kenton

By contrast. Rhapsody created in 1980 for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lesley Collier and set to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini', has no narrative – just dizzyingly fast footwork and jumps, interspersed with moments of dreamy lyricism.


Les Rendez Vous is a succession of dances for a group of friends who meet in a park; this revival will bring debuts by Royal Ballet principals Reece Clarke, Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov. It has new sets and costumes by Jasper Conran.

The short works in Programme Two include Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan, Ashton's fascinating tribute to the American pioneer of free dance; the rarely seen Hamlet and Ophelia, a re-staging of the Hamlet Prelude choreographed originally for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, now with new designs by Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

The Sarasota Ballet, whose Ashton season runs in parallel at the Linbury Theatre, will join this programme to dance A Walk to the Paradise Garden, a passionate pas de deux with the lovers finally walking hand in hand towards Death.