“And—?”
“And this morning I said to myself, ‘Come, pull yourself together.’ I tried an old law of association of ideas. I managed to remember the name of this hotel had something to do with diplomacy. ‘Diplomacy—Diplomacy,’ I said to myself.... ‘Embassy?... No, that’s not it.’ I tried again.... ‘Ambassador?’ ... There, you have it. And here I am.... Let us go, or we shall be late. Where is this press conference?”
That is Ninette de Valois.
Ninette de Valois’ work as a choreographer speaks for itself. Her approach to any work is always professional, always intellectual, never amateur, never sentimental. Some of her works may be more successful than others, whether they are academic or highly original, but each bears the imprint of one of the most distinctive, able, and agile minds in the history of ballet.
So far as I have been able to observe, Ninette de Valois is Sadler’s Wells. Sadler’s Wells is the national ballet of Britain. In looking objectively at the organization, with its two fine companies, its splendid school, I pray that Ninette de Valois may long be spared, for, with all its splendid organization, Sadler’s Wells and British national ballet are synonyms, and unless the dear lady has someone up her sleeve, I cannot, for the life of me, see a successor in the offing.
FREDERICK ASHTON
Frederick Ashton, the chief choreographer of the company, is the complete antithesis of his colleague. Where de Valois is realistic, “Freddy” is sentimental. Where “Madame” may sometimes be rigid, Ashton is adaptable. Some of his work is “slick” and smooth. He is a romantic, but by that I do not necessarily mean a “neo-romantic.”
Ashton was born in Ecuador, in 1909, which does not make him Ecuadorian, any more than the fact that he spent his childhood in Peru, makes him Peruvian. His British parents happened to be living there at the time. It is said that his interest in dance was first aroused upon seeing Anna Pavlova dance in far-off Peru.
Moving to London with his parents, “Freddy” had the privilege of being exposed to performances of the Diaghileff Company, and he had his first ballet lessons from Leonide Massine. Massine turned him over to Marie Rambert when he left London. It was for Rambert that he staged his first work, The Tragedy of Fashion, for the Nigel Playfair revue, Hammersmith Nights, in 1926. An interim in Paris with Ida Rubenstein, Nijinska, and Massine, was followed by a long time with Marie Rambert and her Ballet Club. The Paris interlude with Nijinska and Massine affected him profoundly. He was a moving figure in the life of the Camargo Society, and in 1935 he joined the Vic-Wells (later to be known as the Sadler’s Wells Ballet), as resident choreographer.
During the years between, Ashton has become England’s great creator. He is also a character dancer of wide variety, as witness his Carabosse in The Sleeping Beauty, his shy and wistful Ugly Sister in Cinderella. His contribution to ballet in England is tremendous. Nigh on to a dozen ballets for the Ballet Rambert; something between twenty-five and thirty for the Sadler’s Wells organization; Devil’s Holiday for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a work which, because of the outbreak of the war, he was unable to complete, and which was never seen in this country with its creator’s full intentions; two works in New York for the New York City Ballet; and the original production of the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson Four Saints in Three Acts, in New York.