The genius of Frederick Ashton

To defend my case that Frederick Ashton ought to be acknowledged as one of the major artistic geniuses of the last century, I would adduce three crucial pieces of evidence, garnered from the Royal Ballet’s ‘Ashton Celebrated’ festival at Covent Garden this month.

The first is ‘Les Rendezvous’, dating from 1933 and one of his earliest enduring creations. Set in a Victorian park in which some harmless young people meet to flirt and circulate, it provides an object lesson in how to make something supremely but unaffectedly stylish out of a wafer-thin premise. The aim is only to please – there is no undercurrent of melancholy or psychological tension, just a series of lyrical and playful dances evolving out of Auber’s chirpy score, full of ingenious pattern-making, unexpected jokes, subtle inclinations and deviations, twists, turns and pauses, all based in an essentially classical vocabulary and radiating blameless good humour. It achieves a simple perfection: even Ashton himself, a terrible old Eeyore, admitted that it was ‘frightfully good’.

This new production has been handsomely designed in elegant pastel shades by Jasper Conran and sensitively staged by Vanessa Palmer. The idiom doesn’t come naturally to the dancers and the central couple, Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov, fell short in sophistication, though they were in assured command of their intricate steps. But Sophie Allnatt, Liam Boswell and Marco Masciari excelled in the perpetuum mobile of a pas de trois that is one of this adorable ballet’s many highlights, and overall the performance infected me with a persistent smile.

‘Five Brahms Waltzes’ is made out of Ashton’s memories of Isadora Duncan, presented by a solo barefoot dancer in a diaphanous chiton. On an empty stage, she skips and runs about as the spirit emerging from the piano moves her.