Frederick Ashton was a British choreographer, ballet dancer and ballet master, born in 1904 in Guayaquil, who died in 1988. This page lists 17 works credited to Ashton as choreographer, including Ondine, Sylvia and Les Patineurs.
Biography
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (17 September 1904 – 18 August 1988) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue.
Determined to be a dancer despite the opposition of his conventional middle-class family, Ashton was accepted as a pupil by Léonide Massine and then by Marie Rambert. In 1926 Rambert encouraged him to try his hand at choreography, and though he continued to dance professionally, with success, it was as a choreographer that he became famous.
Ashton was chief choreographer to Ninette de Valois, from 1935 until his retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970.
Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are Façade (1931), Symphonic Variations (1946), Cinderella (1948), La fille mal gardée (1960), Monotones I and II (1965), Enigma Variations (1968) and the ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971).
Works choreographed by Frederick Ashton
| Title | Type | Premiere |
|---|---|---|
| A Month in the Country | ballet | 1976 |
| A Tragedy of Fashion | ballet | 1926 |
| Birthday Offering | ballet | 1956 |
| Cinderella | ballet | 1948 |
| Façade | ballet production | 1976 |
| Façade | ballet | — |
| Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan | ballet | 1975 |
| La fille mal gardée | ballet | 1960 |
| Les Patineurs | ballet | 1937 |
| Les Patineurs | ballet production | 1977 |
| Les Rendezvous | ballet | 1933 |
| Les Rendezvous | ballet production | — |
| Marguerite and Armand | ballet | 1963 |
| Ondine | choreographic work | 1958 |
| Sylvia | ballet | 1876 |
| Symphonic Variations | ballet | — |
| Voices of Spring | ballet | — |
Contemporaries
Edna Deane
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Leighton Lucas
British composer (1903-1982)
Arnold Cooke
British composer (1906–2005)
Mary Skeaping
British ballet dancer
Antony Tudor
British dancer and choreographer (1908–1987)
Alicia Markova
British ballerina, choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet (1910-2004)
Lydia Sokolova
British dancer (1896–1974)
Benjamin Britten
English composer, conductor, and pianist (1913-1976)
Facts from Wikidata (Q711073), CC0.