THREE ASHTON BALLETS: SCÉNES DE BALLET / A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY / SYMPHONY: Ashton's Enduring Legacy

Sir Frederick Ashton had a life as packed with incident as one of his ballets.  Born in Ecuador to British parents, he did not move to England until he was 15 to a public school to learn a trade.  He was miserable there as he had already seen what he wanted to be his future: he had seen Anna Pavlova dance and was desperate to be a dancer but his family refused to contemplate it.  His father commited suicide when Fred was 20 and, despite his mother and sister joining him in London, he followed his dream and was accepted as a pupil by two former Ballets Russes stars Leonide Massine and later by Marie Rambert.  As well as all these influences, he had also seen the iconic Isadora Duncan dance.

By 1930 Ashton had been encouraged by Rambert to concentrate on choreography and he worked for her company Ballet Club which morphed into Ballet Rambert.  In 1935, after working with her on several production, Ashton joined another former Ballet Russes star Ninette de Valois as her company choreographer.  So Ashton was well placed when, after WWII, de Valois' company was invited to form the new ballet company at Covent Garden Opera House, the company that ten years later were granted the title The Royal Ballet.  Two years after moving to Covent Garden Ashton created SCÉNES DE BALLET (1948) to music by Igor Stravinsky.

Against a surreal background, the short piece still holds the attention with Ashton's pioneering geometric choreography, the dancers' sharp staccato movements and the arresting although slightly dated costume colours of yellow, black, purple and blue.  The lead performances by Yasmine Naghadi and Reece Clarke were fine.

De Valois stood down as director in 1963 and Ashton took over.  Although no fan of administration his tenure continued to build The Royal Ballet's fame but when the CEO David Webster stood down in 1970 he wanted a whole new creative team to take over so Ashton was forced to stand down too which was an upset to him.  Sir Fred still created the occasional ballet including his narrative masterpiece A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY (1976)

We had seen A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY in 2019 and it remains a remarkable adaptation of Turgenev's play.  Natalia Petrovna rules her country home with a charming grace, adored by her husband Ysiaev, son Kolia, her ward Vera and close friend Rakitin.  Her life is changed however when her son's new tutor arrives, handsome student Baliaev.  He returns Natalia's affections but when Vera discovers them together, she jealously alerts the whole family to their romance; Baliaev leaves and Natalia is left with her lovelorn feelings.

Peggy Ashcroft told Ashton that his version was better than the original play and at only 40 minutes it whips along. Ashton's clean, classic tone and economic story-telling shine and his choreography allows moments for the cast to stand out such as Liam Boswell's solo as Kolya.  It is a haunting cameo of a ballet, perfectly matched to a selected score by Chopin.  William Bracewell was a passionate Baliaev and Isabella Gasparini was fine as Vera.  But the heart of the ballet was the remarkable Natalia Osipova - her poise and elegance changed by sudden love ending up crushed, slowly walking towards an uncertain future.  

In 1980, Sir Fred aged 76 was invited to devise a short piece to celebrate The Queen Mother's 80th birthday and he produced RHAPSODY to music by Rachmaninoff.  As Mikhail Baryshnikov was a guest artist with The Royal Ballet, the male lead role is certanly more showier than the female partner, originally danced by Lesley Collier.  Ashton had used the music before in Vincente Minnelli's film STORY OF THREE LOVES but devised new choreography for this commission.  

Baryshnikov missed the start of rehearsals so Ashton perfected the female lead's solos and the ensemble of 6 male and 6 female dancers.  When he arrived Baryshnikov was disappointed that his movements were in the brash "Russian style" and not the more nuanced English style that Ashton had created but he threw himself into it.  Here it was a perfect fit for Steven McRae's bravura style although it was still an edge-of-seat performance as it is only 7 months since his return to the stage where he tore his tendon during a performance in MANON which took two years to heal.  Anna Rose O'Sullivan was a delightful partner but Steven's astonishing leaps and sheer panache made him the focus of attention throughout; it ended with a lovely "That's all" pose which won him cheers to the Faberge egg-style roof.

Sir Fred died eight years after RHAPSODY's creation, his place in the history of dance assured and his legacy of work lives on vibrantly in the company he helped form.

WITHIN THE GOLDEN HOUR / MEDUSA / FLIGHT PATTERN at Covent Garden

Royal Ballet mixed programmes can be a curate's egg at times: it all depends on the arranging of the ballets - is it better to have three pieces that are all the same tone or if you have a mixture, where do you put the downbeat ones - does the audience leave moved to euphoria or sadness?  It's a tricky balancing act.

The latest mixed bill celebrated new choreographers and was an impressive evening, again showing the range and versatility of the Royal Ballet company.  First out of the gate was Christopher Wheeldon's WITHIN THE GOLDEN HOUR which we saw twice three years ago.  Since then, the late Martin Pakledinaz' costumes have made way for sparkly gold ones by Jasper Conran which are actually a bit distracting - the only ersatz moment in an otherwise wonderful piece.

It premiered for San Francisco Ballet in 2008 and features a score by Ezio Bosso - incorporating a section of Vivaldi - to which fourteen dancers twirl, slide and undulate through pas de deux and ensemble movements in a constantly evolving, surprising, thrilling production; it's final moments are extraordinary.  Our ensemble was wonderful with great contributions from Sarah Lamb, Lauren Cuthbertson and Alexander Campbell.

The next one was the new production MEDUSA choreographed by the 'hot' Belgian Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui - remarkable what a job with Beyoncé can do for your profile.  He has used a score drawn from the music by Henry Purcell, augmented by electro beats.  Cherkaoui was also responsible for the deceptively simple but effective stage design.  Oddly topical, Cherkaoui tells the tale of Medusa, a devoted priestess of the goddess Athene, who attracts both the human Perseus and the god Poseidon.  Poseidon traps her and rapes her but as the angry Athene cannot punish a fellow god, she punishes the victim.  Medusa is turned into a Gorgon whose mere glance can turn men to stone - and yes, her lovely hair is turned into a nest of venomous snakes.

She kills all men who cross her path but when faced with Perseus she allows herself to be killed.  Freed from the goddess' curse, the ghostly Medusa dances alone in the temple...  With a running time of only 40 minutes, it managed to be engrossing and a little anti-climactic at the same time.  Natalia Osipova was a magnificent Medusa, danced with a committed fervour and passion.  I also liked the imperious Athene of Olivia Cowley, prowling the stage with a vengeful fury.  It just felt a little dull, maybe with a couple of years under it's belt it will loosen up.

Finally it was time to see again Crystal Pite's intense and powerful FLIGHT PATTERN, vividly depicting an eternal flight of a column of refugees.  It is an extraordinary piece which seems to exist in a single moment in time and truly stands out as an artistic response to this shifting recurring tragedy of displaced people that we see across the world.

Pite's wonderful choreography moves in waves across the stage illustrating the flight, in all senses of the word, but also in tiny moments of a couple's experience of migration which were exceptionally danced again by Kristen McNally and Marcellino Sambé.  Jay Gower Taylor's monumental design and Tom Visser's exceptional lighting made it, again, a thrillingly memorable experience.

 

Congratulations to Kevin O'Hare's Royal Ballet for again providing such an enjoyable but thought-provoking evening of dance.

 

Theatre of War: WAR HORSE at the Lyttelton Theatre; THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER Mixed Programme at Covent Garden

As was expected, the theatre also marked the Centenary of the end of Word War I in November and I saw two of the productions that marked the event.

First off was the more obvious one, the National Theatre's game-changing production of WAR HORSE which had been on manoeuvres around the country before reaching the Lyttelton Theatre stable for an extended stay until the start of January.

As Mr and Mrs World know by now, WAR HORSE is based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo about Albert Narracott who, although under-age, joins up to find his beloved horse Joey who has been sold to the army and is somewhere on the Western Front; while there boy and horse both experience the carnage of war at first hand.  I was lucky to see both the original 2007 production and the 2008 revival, both at the Olivier Theatre and both were very moving, involving productions - just ask Stephen Sondheim who was a blubbing wreck in 2007 on the night we went!

It then moved to the New London Theatre where it had an amazing run from 2009 to 2016.  Joey has since become a mainstay of many Remembrance celebrations, a genuine iconic presence.  I had such vivid memories of the show that it was a surprise that it was nearly ten years since I had seen it last so another visit was definitely on the cards.

The good news is that Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris' production - here re-directed by Katie Henry - still delivers the emotional crescendo which had the Lyttelton audience sobbing and sniffing and there are certain images that are indelible once you have seen them, however...  it is a given that no one really goes to see WAR HORSE for the cast's performances - Nick Dear's adaptation is more weighted towards Joey, his equine rival Topthorn and the Narracott's family goose - but even by these standards the anonymity of the performances was quite astonishing.

Thomas Dennis as Albert hardly registered and, as his irascible father Ted, Gwilym Lloyd huffed and puffed to very little effect.  There is also a very odd performance from Ben Ingles as the supposedly-sympathetic officer Lt. Nicholls who promises to care for Joey - it was nothing I could really pinpoint but I wouldn't trust him with a My Little Pony toy, let alone our plucky Joey.  Even the usual laugh-generator role of the f-ing Sgt Thunder went for nothing in Jason Furnival's hands.

However I would like to praise Peter Becker as the caring German officer Friedrich Muller who helps Joey and Topthorn when they are captured on the wrong side of No Man's Land, he at least convinced that Muller was a three-dimensional character.  Jo Castelton as Rose Narracott also found some depth as Albert's careworn but worried mother and the John Tams' songs were well sung by Bob Fox.

The best performances were unsurprisingly by the Handspring life-size puppets of Joey, both foal and horse, Topthorn and - yes - the goose.  The puppeteers invested them all with character and emotions which made it very easy to forget the actors and concentrate on them.  In particular, the scenes where  Joey and Topthorn were commandeered by the German army as pack-horses were full of unspoken pathos, none more so than Joey's gentle nuzzling of Topthorn as he dies, exhausted and broken.  The excellent touch of Topthorn's demise being made real by having his puppeteers slowly emerge from the puppet and slowly walking offstage is incredibly effective.

I did feel something was lost in the transfer to the proscenium stage but Rae Smith's spare design, Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler's remarkable puppet design and Paule Constable's lighting still delivered, as did Adrian Sutton's score.  I am glad I experienced WAR HORSE again, but just wish that most of the human cast had invested their roles with the passion that the puppeteers did.

A few days later we saw a more intriguing response to the Centenary, the Royal Ballet's premiere of THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, which was part of a mixed programme with Wayne McGregor's INFRA and the late George Balanchine's SYMPHONY IN C.

The ballet took as it's inspiration the recorded memories of WWI veteran Wally Patch and a contemporary of his, Florence Billington, who in voice-over remember the quiet and lonely devastation they felt at the deaths of friends and a boyfriend respectively.  These spoken memories are interwoven with the lush, sombre score by film composer Dario Marianelli to create an absorbing soundscape to Alastair Marriott's choreography which illustrates the story of Florence and her beau Ted Feltham; from their meeting at a social dance before the war to his enlisting and subsequent death on the battlefield, cradled by Patch as he dies, to Florence receiving the news by telegram to Ted viewing it all from another place.

The ballet was visually stunning with a fractured, broken video playing on the scrim of contemporary footage of the call to arms in 1914 to the solemn procession of the coffin of the Unknown Soldier in 1920, which eventually raised to reveal Es Devlin's minimalist design of rotating flat panels which were played upon by Bruno Poet's stark lighting to create sweeping changes of tone across the stage while the reminiscences of Patch and Billington were heard.

There were good performances from William Bracewell as Ted and Anna Rose O'Sullivan as Florence but in the cold light of day the ballet failed to move; Marriott's choreography was nice to watch but detracted from the pathos of the spoken testimony of individual loss.  There was no profundity in the thoughts behind the movements but more importantly the very real disconnect between the spoken remembrances of the Western Front's living Hell and the precision and athleticism of the male dancers was too strong to ignore.  The piece ultimately felt like there was no real artistic need for being there, it was a commission to fill a brief in the programming.  I also read somewhere the jibe that he can't be THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER if we know his name was Ted Feltham!

The three ballets in the mixed programme seemed to have been selected to counter-point each other, there was no linear connection between them other than to show off the versatility of the Royal ballet company.  McGregor's INFRA from 2008 had twelve dancers hyper-extending in solos and groups to McGregor's signature taxing choreography while above them Julien Opie's illuminated silhouettes walked in solipsistic silence left and right.  It's an obvious leap to get what McGregor is illustrating - the tortured souls underneath those anonymous walkers - but after a while you long for a resolution.  But always good to hear Max Richter's music...

But then the mood was turned on it's head again with George Balanchine's glorious SYMPHONY IN C, danced to the music of Georges Bizet.  Premiered in 1947 in Paris but extensively re-thought for New York City Ballet the following year, Balanchine drew on his extensive knowledge of the Russian classical tradition from his teenage years with the Imperial Ballet and from his years with the Ballet Russes in the 1920s.

Broken down into four movements with new performers for each, SYMPHONY IN C is a whirlwind extravaganza of pure classical technique: it's like every classical ballet finale with the narrative and named characters removed so you can just concentrate on solos, pas de deux and ensemble routines.  With over 50 dancers onstage as it reaches it's conclusion, it felt so impossibly sumptuous and showy that I almost expected a camera crane to swoop in and a director to yell "cut", such is it's feel of a Hollywood musical idea of a big ballet number.

The four couples were excellently danced by Natalia Osipova, Sarah Lamb, Reece Clarke, Marcelino Sambé, William Bracewell, Anna Rose O'Sullivan, Yuhue Choe and Luca Acri.  It was by far the most memorable piece of the evening and rather put the others in their place.

I would definitely see SYMPHONY IN C again, I am happy to have seen THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER and INFRA but think I would pass on seeing them again.  However as I said earlier, the mixed programme was a wonderful showcase for the talents of the whole Royal Ballet company.

THE ILLUSTRATED "FAREWELL" / THE WIND / UNTOUCHABLE at Covent Garden

Time for another triple bill from the Royal Ballet, they do come round with some regularity and I know there is another due in April.  Although these all had individual moments, they did not hang together as a whole.

On reflection the one I enjoyed most was Twyla Tharp's THE ILLUSTRATED "FAREWELL" which builds on an earlier ballet she choreographed in 1973 set to Haydn's 'Farewell' symphony.  That work was called AS TIME GOES BY but only used the final movements of the symphony; when invited to work for the Royal Ballet for the first time since 1995, Tharp leaped at the opportunity to choreograph the first two movements of 'Farewell' to flow into the older ballet.

The ballet was, for me, the most thrilling as the opening was danced by the marvellous partnership of Steven McRae and Sarah Lamb whose dancing flows and complements each other beautifully.  Gravity-defying leaps, standing pivots and intricate 'pop' movements that showed their effortless synchronicity well.  As well as being excellent dancers, they also convey real personalities and connect perfectly with the audience.

The older work is introduced soundlessly by the whirling, swirling Mayara Magri who is partnered by Joseph Sissons (who we saw as the tapping Mad Hatter in ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND), and later groupings of five then ten dancers - with occasional appearances by Steven McRae and Sarah Lamb high above the stage, almost ghostly visions of the earlier music.  As I said, for the quality of pure dance, this was my favourite of the three.

Arthur Pita has only choreographed for the Royal Ballet's studio space so for his main stage debut he has gone for an "intimate epic" THE WIND.  Based in part on the original novel by Dorothy Scarborough and the Victor Sjostrom classic silent film which starred Lillian Gish, it certainly grabbed the attention but was over far too soon.  There was no character development and the plot climax was too garbled.  However I enjoyed it while I was watching it for Pita's stagecraft.

The ballet opened with the arresting image of billowing plastic sheeting blowing across the stage from massive jukebox-like fans which kept up the gale all through the act.  A ghostly-pale native American dances with and against the wind before ushering in the plot: young Letty arrives in a dust bowl western town - where the men are men and the sheep are frightened - and marries the taciturn and unemotional Lige. Letty was danced by the always extraordinary Natalya Osipova and she captured the uncertainty of a woman unable to fit into her environment.

Left alone by Lige, Letty is terrorized and later raped by the boo-worthy Wirt (the always-dependable Thomas Whitehead) and as she exacts her revenge on him, the constant howling wind finally snaps her grasp on reality and, watched by the mysterious figures of the native American and a bone-bleached frontier woman, walks into the howling night unafraid.

As I said, Osipova was enthralling as was Edward Watson as the ominous native American, but the piece was just far too short to get much involvement going and the large wind machines were just too modern and clunky for the period setting.  However special shout-out have to go to to the costumes by Yann Seabra which fluttered and whipped around in the constant gale and the lighting by Adam Silverman.

I certainly think I could take another chance to see THE WIND at some later date but hopefully they can find maybe 15 more minutes to allow for some engagement with the main role - maybe they could have trimmed some off Hofesh Shechter's interminable UNTOUCHABLE.  I am amazed it only ran 30 minutes, it seemed so much longer.  One cannot deny the talented 20 dancers onstage who moved in strict rhythm either en mass, as smaller groups or alone but, if truth be told, if I want to see a fascistic, militarist troupe go through their motions, I will watch Janet Jackson's video for RHYTHM NATION.

So there we are - one winner, one curiosity and one dud.  I don't suppose that's a bad batting average but I have seen more cohesive triple bills on the same stage, these three pieces simply didn't coalesce.  Maybe they need to roll the dice again and match them with other ballets?

WOOLF WORKS Works On Stage, Screen And CD... Living the past again

Nearly two years ago, we took the plunge - in the year of trying new things artistically - and went to Covent Garden to see WOOLF WORKS, a new Royal Ballet production choreographed by Wayne McGregor.  I remember feeling some trepidation... Virginia Woolf is one of my favourite authors for whom language is the key so how can you silence that but still make it relevant?  Two words... Wayne McGregor.

As you can see from my blog it had a profound effect on us both and it did indeed start a continuing exploration of ballet which has been very rewarding.  But how would the first revival of WOOLF WORKS compare - and would it have the same impact?

I am happy to be able to say that it led to a deeper, richer understanding of the work but also there was the added bonus this year of seeing it on the big screen at the Curzon Mayfair and also being able to appreciate the depth of Max Richter's music with it's release on cd.

Onstage we were blessed with practically the same cast as in 2015, the only major replacement being Calvin Richardson and his breathtaking pirouettes dancing the role of 'Evans' for the unwell Tristan Dyer in the MRS. DALLOWAY-inspired 'I Now, I Then'.  The impact of seeing the company onstage was made even more exciting by seeing the same dancers a few days later on the live cinema screening, giving an opportunity to experience their talent closer than possible at the Opera House although there was some loss too, in particular the glorious digital stage image of the garden of Clarissa's imagined youth flooding the set.

McGregor has choreographed three ballets in distinct styles: 'I Now, I Then' is the most narrative; based on MRS DALLOWAY - and introduced with the only known recording of Virginia Woolf musing on the difficulty of using old English words in new ways - we see Clarissa Dalloway (sublime Alessandra Ferri) meeting old flame Peter Walsh (Gary Aves) and relives the glorious summer she spent as a teenager with Peter and her best friend, the free spirited Sally Seton, and how life seemed full of possibility and choice.  The younger selves were danced wonderfully by Francesca Hayward, Federico Bonelli and Beatriz Stix-Brunell.

As Clarissa is lost in memories of what could have been we also see Septimus Smith (the astonishing Edward Watson) who is tortured with the lasting trauma of shell-shock from his experience in the WWI trenches.  His wife Rezia (Akana Takada) tries to keep him engaged in life but he is lost in memories of his friend Evans (Richardson) who was killed before him.  It is a perfect fusion of performance, choreography, design by Cigué, lighting by Lucy Carter - the moment the stage was suffused with glowing red when Septimus danced with Evans was glorious - and, almost a character of it's own, Max Richter's heartbreaking, longing music.

The second act 'Becomings' takes ORLANDO as it's inspiration and is the most abstract of the pieces although during one of the intervals for the screened event Wayne McGregor was interviewed by hosts Darcey Bussell and Clemency Burton-Hill and said he believed that no dance can be truly abstract as the human element will always lend a dance a narrative sense.  Again Lucy Carter's lighting is thrilling: an overhead beam roams the dark stage picking out 12 dancers in varying degrees of glittering gold Elizabethan costumes before a cold laser beam illuminates two of them and we launch into McGregor's take on Woolf's exploration of gender fluidity.

As Richter's music roams from bone-crunching electro beats to minimal keyboard runs so McGregor's choreography changes from solos to duets to triple routines for his remarkable dancers - pushing their limbs into even more challenging shapes and attitudes; the exhilaration is in seeing male and female dancers fusing into just pure dance.  With each segment, they slowly lose their Elizabethan costumes until they are in shades of grey, all dancing in and out of four overhead spotlights, all individual but all unified, until the lights cut out and the auditorium is criss-crossed with shafts of laserlight.  Again the live screening was wonderful to showcase in detail the astonishing work of, among others, Sarah Lamb, Natalia Osipova, Steven McRae and Watson.

The final act is TUESDAY and takes it inspiration from THE WAVES but also references Woolf's suicide note written on Tuesday 25th March 1941, three days before she actually drowned in the River Ouse.  McGregor has the inspired choice of Gillian Anderson reading the wrenching suicide note while a slow-motion film of crashing waves shows on a stage-wide screen all but dwarfing the stationary figure of Ferri beneath.  Anderson's measured, hypnotic delivery leads you in to McGregor's slow meditation on love and loss, beautifully danced by Ferri and Federico Bonelli who are later joined by Sarah Lamb and an ensemble which also includes young students from the Royal Ballet School.

Ferri is astonishing in her poetry and control as she becomes the embodiment of Richter's dreamlike, ethereal music, solitary notes slowly coming together with Anush Hovhannisyan's soprano to wash over you with waves of strings and brass.  There was one moment that haunts me: Alessandra Ferri starts a solo movement against the ensemble's choreography who slowly, three or four at a time, echo her until they are all bending and stretching as one, it's breathtakingly beautiful.  Slowly the ensemble ebb away into the darkness at the back of the stage, as Bonelli lowers a prone Ferri onto the stage as the music slowly vanishes note by note...

As I have said, the live screening was a wonderful opportunity to see the dancers closer than possible in the theatre and there were the added extras of interviews with Wayne McGregor and Max Richter as well as Maggie Smith reading passages from THE WAVES as well as Virginia's memoir MOMENTS OF BEING.

As I have written this I have been able to relive the experience by playing the cd THREE WORLDS of Richter's score; I wondered if it would work separately from the experience of seeing it with the dancers but it works beautifully.  It has been great to be able to explore this work in depth for the past two weeks - I would love the opportunity to see it again.

LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE at Covent Garden - timeless pastoral pleasure

Last week it was time to return to Covent Garden for the first time since the Bolshoi Ballet came for a summer visit and slightly underwhelmed with their technically perfect but emotionally sterile performances.  But here we are on more satisfying ground with the Royal Ballet's evergreen production of Sir Frederick Ashton's LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE.

Ashton's 1960 production has remained a constant in the Royal Ballet's repertoire and I suspect has been many people's first experience of ballet as it plays like a ballet pantomime.  The night we saw it was it's 364th performance!

The very first production of LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE was in 1789 with music based on popular French compositions.  In an 1828 revival this music was rewritten by composer Ferdinand Hérold into a more streamlined score.  However in 1864 an Italian production commissioned a new score by the composer Peter Ludwig Hertel - it's quite confusing isn't it!  However for Ashton's version he plumped for Hérold's score - but only after John Lanchbery had incorporated bits of other scores into it!

The production also incorporates Osbert Lancaster's original storybook designs which add to the charm of the overall ballet.  The story couldn't be simpler: farm girl Lise is in love with farmer Colas but her mother Widow Simone wants her to marry the rich twit Alain - will true love win out?  Like, duh!

Ashton's choreography has a wonderful timeless quality to it which provided plenty of scope for little moments that give the principal's the chance to flesh out their roles so, even if it is a flimsy prospect on the page, in performance the dancers create vibrant characters.

Of course it also helps to have marvellous dancers in the main roles and we were lucky to have the spirited partnership of Steven McRae and Natalia Osipova as Colas and Lise.  Neither were offstage for very long and their solos and duets were full of the joy and delight of young love.  They fully deserved the huge ovation they received at their curtain call.

The last time we saw Thomas Whitehead on the stage of Covent Garden it was as the brooding lecherous husband in THE INVITATION but here he was great fun as the Widow Simone; Dan Leno as Widow Twankey reborn.  It's not often that you hear laughter in the Covent Garden auditorium but his delightful clog dance with four farm girls was worth the price of admission alone!

There was also a nice supporting performance from James Hay as the dopey Alain, forever clutching his beloved red umbrella to him.  Oh and a special mention to Peregrine the pony for a perfectly performed solo!

The ensemble provided excellent support - even the ballerina who slipped during one of the big company numbers.  I suspect her pride was hurt more than anything else.

The real star however was Frederick Ashton's gloriously romantic choreography and I suspect this delicious rustic classic will be in the repertoire for years to come.

A timeless treasure....