I once read a quote by Margot Fonteyn where she said that, for whatever reason, Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballets “didn’t keep”. It is true. Ashton was once considered part of Ballet’s 20th century Big Three (along with Balanchine and Robbins). But while Balanchine and Robbins ballets are staged everywhere, every year, many Ashton ballets have quietly disappeared from the repertoire. This is why the work of the Sarasota Ballet is so important. This small company in Florida has lovingly preserved many Ashton ballets. Not just the hits like The Dream or La Fille mal gardee, but rarities as well. Sarasota Ballet arrived at the Joyce Theater this week and presented Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Varii Capricci, and a new Jessica Lang piece.
It was an absolutely delightful evening at the ballet. Birthday Offering (1956) was a pièce d’occasion that celebrated The Royal Ballet’s 25th anniversary. That company's specialty has always been The Sleeping Beauty and Birthday Offering resembles Beauty in both structure and style. There are six variations for ballerinas that recall Beauty's fairy solos. The main couple (originated by Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes) dance a pas de deux filled with balances with the arms in fifth, an obvious tribute to the Rose Adagio.
The dancers of Sarasota Ballet presented Birthday Offering in true Ashton style – modest, charming, with an emphasis on small changes in the upper body. Somewhere along the line I thought that Fonteyn probably would have held the balances in the pas longer and with more panache than Maccarena Gimenez did last night, but Sarasota Ballet is a small regional company of limited means.
Jessica Lang’s Shades of Spring premiered last night. Having seen several of her pieces for ABT and been unimpressed, Shades of Spring is by far the best Lang work I’ve seen. The production design by Roxane Revon was intriguing – photos of various flora and fauna were projected onstage. Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trios were such lovely music to set a ballet that when the curtain went down I was actually sad the music ended.
I admit I groaned at the somewhat pretentious program notes for this piece – “Lang, Revon and Lewis have found their inspiration from plant roots and the natural world. Plants gain strength from being connected to each other as their roots intertwine into a connectedness that allows them to nourish and support each other” – but what I saw was an engaging, pleasing piece that showcased the company beautifully.
Men and women partner each other in a somewhat random configuration – male/female, male/male, female/female, group mix. The men dance more modern dance (at one point, recreating the famous duck pose of Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace), the women more classical ballet (to drive home the point, the women are in practice tutus). I’ll have to see this piece again to catch all the nuances, but I can’t recall the last time I liked a contemporary ballet so unreservedly.
The last piece on the program is a true Ashton rarity; Varii Capricci has not been seen since its premiere in 1983. Back then, it received good reviews: Anna Kisselgoff wrote “Varii Capricci is Sir Frederick fooling around, caught up in a spirit of fun. It is that rare ballet bird – a self-parody and an honorable parody of The Royal Ballet's own traditions.” It’s one of those beach resort ballets, set with a background of palm trees. The original couple of La Capricciosa (lounging around on a chaise in a glamorous white evening gown) and Lo Straniero (wearing black shades to drive home the fact that he’s cool) were Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell.
Seen today, the ballet is cute but slight. Part of the problem is that the music (set to William Walton’s work of the same name) is a bit too heavy and bombastic for this fluffy, light-hearted ballet. The pas de deux between La Capricciosa and Lo Straniero has plenty of Ashton’s trademark air walking (where a woman is carried by the man and her feet “walk” through the air). Maybe too much. Danielle Brown and and Ricardo Rhodes were comic and cheeky as the beach resort leads, but made no deep impression. This is a ballet where I suspect the charisma of the originators probably masked the weaknesses of the ballet.
Not every Ashton work is a masterpiece. But the important thing is that Sarasota Ballet is presenting these Ashton works with such love and care. It ensures that even if the ballets won’t ‘keep’, they aren’t forgotten.
