Frederick Ashton was born 11th September 1904 in Ecuador. He grew up in Peru and in 1917 he fell in love with a dancer, Anna Pavlova, who was one of the first prima ballerinas of her time, she was russian, she also trained and danced with Marius Petipa, she established a school of dance in England and she had a very successful touring career. He was sent to school in England and then in 1921 he worked in an office until his brother offered to pay for his training. He began his training at aged seventeen to become a proffessional ballet dancer. He trained for ten and one of his teachers, Dame Marie Rambert, was convinced of his talent, so pushed him into choreography as it was too late to become a dancer. He became a very important choreographer in British ballet who re-staged 'Giselle' after Petipa. His first choreography was 'Tragedy of Fashion' which was a huge success. He trained with Enricho Cecchitti and created nearly twenty ballets of Rambert. In 1928-1929 he found a new idol who replaced Anna Pavlova, Bronislava Nijinska, who was also russian, she was very petite however, very strong, with the mariinsky ballet she had a very successful career and she was the sister of the famous dancer, Vaslav Nijinska. After 1935 he moved away from Rambert to work with Ninette de valois and the Vic Wells ballet which is now the Royal Ballet.
The people which in fluenced Frederick Ashton's career-each in their own way:
Frederick Ashton's choreographic style:
His work became plotless for a while e.g. when he did 'Symphonic Variations' in 1946, 'Scenes de Ballet' in 1948 and 'Variations on a Theme by purcell' in 1955 however, later on in this year he returned to narrative ballet when he did 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'La Fille mal Garde' in 1960-this was known as the happiest of all ballets.WWII in 1939 influenced his style so social hierachy and power struggles are what Ashton's ballets focused on.
Summary of choreographic style:
- Cecchetti's codified technique
- Story telling
- Elaborate characters
- Use of the leit motif from Petipa
- Interests in social conflicts
Marius Petipa was born on 11th March 1818 in Brussels, Belgium Marseille, France. As a child he travelled all around the world because his mother and father both worked within the performance industry; his mother was an actress and a drama teacher and his father was a dancer. When he was seven, he started ballet however, he didn't like it and he wanted to play the violin.As a choreographer now, he would have been affected and he would have been made better through the experience when he was a child; he would have seen many different styles of dance so he has experience different ideas in terms of dance. His training included going to 'The Royal conservatory of Brussels' which is a drama and music school in Brussels, Belgium, an academy for acting and the arts which has been attended by many of the top actors and actresses such as Josse De Paliw, Luk De Mello and Luk De Konink. Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone also studied here. Marius Petipa also attended 'Grand theatre de Bordeaux'; this is where he staged some of his first ballets. He started to choreograph in 1843. He then became a ballet master of the russian imperial ballet. Petipa's ballet style is very clean and simple, he repeats combinations, it is moulded into intricaty and it is less narative. He incorporated russian folk dance into ballet aswell as other dances inspired by fairytales. He then produced 'Giselle' in 1884. In Gurzuf Crimea 14th July 1910 he died, aged ninety-two.
