Frederick Ashton, the choreographer who defined English ballet's look, gets a triple bill of his own works on the Royal Ballet's Main Stage.
Frederick Ashton was the founding choreographer of what is now the Royal Ballet. A triple bill of his own works runs at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden from Monday 25 January to Friday 19 March 2027.
Ashton was born in Guayaquil in 1904 and grew up in South America. He decided as a boy that he would be a dancer, and came to London to do it against his family’s disapproval.
He made more than a hundred works and ran the company after Ninette de Valois. His style became the English one: fast footwork, a bending upper body, wit rather than grandeur, and no pose held for applause. Dancers still identify the Fred Step, a phrase he hid in almost everything he made.
His full-length ballets include La Fille mal gardée, Cinderella and A Month in the Country. He is the reason a Royal Ballet dancer moves differently from a Bolshoi one.
The works are technically harder than they look, so companies elsewhere programme them rarely. The Royal Ballet gives three on the Main Stage: a comedy, a study in pure form and a myth.