The Royal Ballet gives three Frederick Ashton works on the Main Stage at Covent Garden, 25 January to 19 March 2027.
Frederick Ashton was born in Guayaquil in 1904 and grew up in South America, decided as a boy that he would be a dancer, and spent his family’s disapproval getting to London to do it. He became the founding choreographer of what is now the Royal Ballet, made more than a hundred works, ran the company after Ninette de Valois, and invented what English ballet looks like: fast footwork, a bending upper body, wit rather than grandeur, and an unwillingness to hold a pose for applause. Dancers still identify the Fred Step, a phrase he hid in almost everything he made.
He is the reason a Royal Ballet dancer moves differently from a Bolshoi one, and the works are technically harder than they look, so companies elsewhere programme them rarely. He also made La Fille mal gardée, Cinderella and A Month in the Country, and the company has periodically had to be reminded to programme him, which is the usual fate of a choreographer whose work looks easy.
The Royal Ballet gives three of them on the Main Stage from Monday 25 January to Friday 19 March 2027 — a comedy, a study in pure form, and a myth — billed as the master craftsman’s landmarks. It is the sort of triple bill the company exists to keep in repertoire even when a full-length would sell more seats.