40 Facts About Frederick Ashton

Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton was a British ballet dancer and choreographer.

Frederick Ashton worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue.

Frederick 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.

Frederick Ashton succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970.

Frederick Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet.

Frederick Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George Frederick Ashton and his second wife, Georgiana, nee Fulcher.

George Frederick Ashton was manager of the Central and South American Cable Company and vice-consul at the British consulate in Guayaquil.

In 1907, the family moved to Lima, Peru, where Frederick Ashton attended a Dominican school.

Frederick Ashton was immediately determined that he would become a dancer.

Frederick Ashton was not academically inclined, and his father decided that, upon leaving the school in 1921, Ashton should join a commercial company.

Frederick Ashton's widow was left financially dependent on her elder sons, who ran a successful business in Guayaquil.

Frederick Ashton moved to London to be with Ashton and his younger sister, Edith.

Frederick Ashton auditioned for Leonide Massine; at the unusually late age of twenty he was accepted as a pupil.

In 1930 Frederick Ashton created an innovative ballet, Capriol Suite, using Peter Warlock's 1926 suite of the same name.

Frederick Ashton contributed to West End revues and musicals, including The Cat and the Fiddle for C B Cochran, and Gay Hussar, in which The Manchester Guardian singled out the "spirited and lovely choreography in the classic manner".

Nevertheless, Frederick Ashton was by now recognised as a choreographer of considerable talent and had gained a national, though not yet international, reputation.

In 1933 Frederick Ashton devised another work for de Valois and her company, the ballet-divertissement Les Rendezvous.

Frederick Ashton continued to create dances for other forms of theatre, from revues such as The Town Talks and Home and Beauty, to opera, including Clive Carey's production of Die Fledermaus at Sadler's Wells, and film, notably Escape Me Never, another collaboration with William Walton, following Facade four years earlier.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War Frederick Ashton was offered a position in New York with what was to become the American Ballet Theatre.

Frederick Ashton declined, and returned to de Valois' company, soon renamed "Sadler's Wells Ballet".

Frederick Ashton created some works along more sombre lines, including Dante Sonata, which symbolised the unending struggle between the children of darkness and the children of light.

In Ballet magazine, Lynette Halewood commented in 2000, "No other work by Frederick Ashton is so disturbing and so bleak".

Frederick Ashton was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force, at first analysing aerial photographs and later as an intelligence officer.

In 1948, at the urging of de Valois, Frederick Ashton created his first major three-act ballet for a British company, his version of Prokofiev's Cinderella.

Some critics have commented that Frederick Ashton was not yet fully in control of a full-length ballet, with intermittent weaknesses in the choreography, but the comedy of the stepsisters was, and has remained, a favourite with audiences.

Frederick Ashton created dances for films, including The Tales of Hoffmann and The Story of Three Loves, and directed operas at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden.

One of Frederick Ashton's most celebrated ballets was created for the Royal Ballet in 1960: La fille mal gardee.

Frederick Ashton did his customary careful research and decided to make use of Ferdinand Herold's music, arranged, with additions from other versions, by John Lanchbery.

When de Valois retired in 1963, Frederick Ashton succeeded her as director.

Frederick Ashton continued to add to the repertoire with his own new productions, he persuaded his former mentor Bronislava Nijinska to revive her Les biches and Les noces, and he presented Mam'zelle Angot by his other mentor, Massine.

Frederick Ashton brought in Antony Tudor, his English contemporary, better known in the US, to stage both new and old works.

Frederick Ashton had frequently told colleagues how he looked forward to his own retirement, but nonetheless was hurt by the abruptness with which his departure was arranged and announced by Webster.

Frederick Ashton stood down in July 1970 after a farewell gala organised by Michael Somes, John Hart and Leslie Edwards.

Frederick Ashton died in his sleep on 19 August 1988, at his country home in Suffolk, and was buried on 24 August at St Mary's Church, Yaxley, Suffolk.

Frederick Ashton included in many of his ballets a signature step, known to dancers as "the Fred step".

Alicia Markova recalled in 1994 that Frederick Ashton had first used the step in a short ballet that concluded Nigel Playfair's 1930 production of Marriage a la Mode.

Frederick Ashton himself danced the step as the timorous sister in Cinderella, and later he and Fonteyn danced a gentle version of it together in Salut d'amour created by Frederick Ashton for her sixtieth birthday gala at Covent Garden.

Frederick Ashton left the rights to many of his ballets to friends and colleagues, including Fonteyn, Dowell, Michael Somes, Alexander Grant, Antony Dyson, and Brian Shaw.

Frederick Ashton received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance in 1959.

Frederick Ashton was awarded the Freedom of the City of London, and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham, East Anglia, London, Hull and Oxford.