Ashton and dancing

I have know Frederick Ashton from his first years as a student in the ballet world.  I can remember him in the 'twenties, first as a pupil of Leonide Massine and later with Marie Rambert.  Small, nervous and touchingly eager to please, is the picture that I recall of him.  Like so many artists, he was more in love with his second best talent: for at one time he appeared to want to dance more than anything else in the world.  When a member of Madam Rambert's Ballet Club, he would dance sometimes with me as an 'extra in the early Old Vic Christmas Ballets -- before Sadler's Wells was rebuilt.  The Ballet Club gave its first performance at the Mercury Theatre about three months ahead of the opening of the Sadler's Wells Theatre.

Ashton joined the Vic-Wells Ballet the year that Markova left us in 1935.  From that autumn, until the outbreak of war, we had the benefit of his first group of ballets.  He was exceptionally prolific -- always working with a great facility.  He has never cared to wander far from his native ballet company, and when he has done so, he has always appeared to be profoundly miserable until he has returned home again.

Ashton has an intensely ephemeral attitude towards his ballets -- I doubt if he has any notes of reference on any of them. . . he would prefer to re-compose rather than endeavour to remember.

He always says that his idea of happiness is to be in the corps de ballet.  Some years ago I was standing next to him during a rehearsal of Purcell's Faerie Queen at the Royal Opera House.  He was directing the choreography: an unconsciously humorous (to balletic minds anyway) rendering of a song was in progress, and although the corps de ballet were in a group on the stage, their faces were turned away from the auditorium.  Suddenly a faint shaking was discernible -- a ripple that increased in vibration as it noticeably passed through the bodies of the dancers.  'Look,' said Fred, 'they are having such a wonderful giggle -- Oh, I wish I was still in the corps and able to giggle like that. . .'

Ashton's giggling days were spent in the Ida Rubinstein Company in the last years of the 'twenties.  He and William Chappell were humble members of the Company.  I can imagine them: two small English boys -- inexperienced, half-trained and underpaid.  He has told me of the economic embarrassment that was caused when the two of them had a quarrel, and might not be on speaking terms for some days: finances demanded the sharing of the tooth paste, the cake of soap and the hair oil; silence made all requests for such mundane possessions a matter of acute, though momentary, lost of dignity. . . .

In his early days Ashton might be lethargic about his choreography, but there was never as much as a hint of lethargy about his dancing.  When young, his weakness lay in a difficulty in keeping time with the music -- and the clock.  Eagerness and intense nervous energy (his natural reaction to movement) made him deaf to sound; one would hold on to him grimly and at the same time experience something of the trouble encountered by anyone involved in the capture of a wild Dartmoor pony.

Come dance with me: a memoir, 1898-1956 by Ninette de Valois.  1957. Pages 180-1.