Ashton and Balanchine: Parallel Lives: 1

Here’s George Balanchine writing on Frederick Ashton, younger than him by seven months. In 1960, Mary Clarke, then editing “Ballet Annual”, invited leading figures of world dance to pay tribute to Ashton, who that year had had a triumph with the premiere of “La Fille mal gardée” and then was knighted. Balanchine says little of substance, but that too is revealing. Mary transcribed other tributes to Ashton into the main text, but reproduced Balanchine’s letter as a full-page illustration. Balanchine had known Ashton for decades - Ashton and Markova had made guest appearances in the London season of Balanchine’s Les Ballets 1933, and that summer in London it was Ashton who introduced Balanchine to Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine had choreographed “Haydn Trumpet Concerto” (1950) for Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet and had staged a new production (1950) of “Ballet Imperial” (designs by Eugene Berman) for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden; Ashton had created “Illuminations” (1950) and “Picnic at Tintagel” (1952) on New York City Ballet. Balanchine knew Ashton well enough to call him “Freddy”; though the dance world decided to call Ashton “Fred”, he far preferred his friends to call him “Freddy” (and “Freddie”) or “Frederick”.

I am preparing to speak on “Balanchine and Ashton - Parallel Lives” for the Center of Ballet and the Arts’s annual Lincoln Kirstein lecture - Monday 5 February, at the Bruno Walter auditorium of the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts. The Ashton-Balanchine relationship was not without tension and jealousy: my point is that the two masters admired each other, took ideas and steps from each other, reacted against each other, all in a way that fertilised world ballet and made ballet classicism grow as never before or since.

December 19, 2017