THE PLACE TO PURSUE LIFE'S PASSIONS - Sarasota Ballet

MONOTONES I & II
At first glance, with its austere qualities
and its firmly “contemporary” title
(sounding more like a dance by Cunningham
or one of the 1960s Judson Church
experimentalists) Monotones I & II does
not appear a typical Ashton work, but
closer inspection reveals it as a characteristically
sensitive and fine exercise in the
great tradition of classical ballet adagio.
First came the ironically-titled Monotones
II – which Ashton created as an abstract
pas de trois, a special “occasion” piece for
Vyvyan Lorraine, Anthony Dowell and
Robert Mead to perform at a Royal Ballet
Benevolent Fund Gala in March 1965.
Dressed in simple white unitards and
skullcaps (very au courant in the moonlanding
1960s), the two men partnered
the female dancer, the trio patterns and
interactions echoing the title of Satie’s famous
1888 Trois Gymnopédies, originally
composed as a piano solo and subsequently
orchestrated by Claude Debussy
and Roland-Manuel.
The short work was extremely well received,
so in the following year, Ashton
expanded the ballet by adding Monotones
I to make a companion trio, this
time for two women and a man, dressed
in green. At the 1966 Royal Ballet premiere, Monotones
I was danced by Antoinette Sibley, Georgina
Parkinson and Brian Shaw. The companion work,
which precedes the earlier Monotones II, is set to
Satie’s piano works Trois Gnossiennes (1890) and Prélude
d’Eginhard (1893), especially orchestrated by
John Lanchbery.
Monotones I & II
24–26 February 2012
FSU Center for the Performing Arts
choreography Sir Frederick Ashton
music Erik Satie
Staged by Lynn Wallace
first Performed by The royal Ballet
Monotones II
24 March 1965
Monotones I
25 April 1966
The two abstract ballets are usually, but not always, performed
together, as a single short work, in the original “opposite” order
Ashton intended. Monotones has been in consistent demand by
international ballet companies: Joffrey Ballet (1974), San Francisco
Ballet (1981) etc.
Ashton fully grasps Satie’s intention to discard grandiose, orchestral
sonority in the Germanic classical tradition, in search of a
lighter, understated, melodic clarity, giving the ballet limpid, flowing
lines, and precise, calm, metronomic movements. Arlene Croce
noted that “the continuity of Ashton’s line is like that of a master
draftsman whose pen never leaves the paper”.
ERIk SATIE
Perhaps the quintessential eccentric and experimenter, the French
pianist and composer Erik Satie was born 17 May 1866 of French-
Scottish parents in Normandy, dividing his childhood between his
grandparents in Honfleur and his father in Paris, who worked as
a translator and, after his first wife’s 1872 death, married a piano
teacher. Early piano and organ lessons took Satie to the Paris Conservatoire,
where he failed to impress.
The 21-year old Satie settled in Montmartre, drifting through the
1890s, writing, composing, struggling financially, and pursuing
such enthusiasms as the Rosicrucians and other religious orders,
socialism and various avant garde ideas, befriending Debussy and
the young Ravel. By 1900, the cash-starved composer had lost his
religious faith, started to work in cabarets and moved to suburban
Arceuil, where he lived for 27 years, unvisited by anyone. An obsessive
and short-lived 1893 affair with the painter Suzanne Valadon
seems to have been Satie’s only relationship.
first Performed by The Sarasota Ballet
24 February 2012
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Meanwhile, Satie continued his studies,
writing and composing, mostly for the
piano, without success until 1912, when
his humorous piano miniatures began
to earn admirers and money. In 1915 he
met Jean Cocteau with whom he collaborated
on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and
then, with Picasso for Diaghilev’s Ballets
Russes, on Parade (1917). There followed
associations with all the Parisian post-
War avant garde movements; Dadaism
via Tristan Tzara, “Les Jeunes” via Ravel,
Surrealism via Picabia, Dérain, Duchamp
and Man Ray, and finally “Les Six” via Auric,
Honegger, Poulenc and Milhaud.
Satie died, from years of heavy drinking,
on 1 July 1925. His reputation rests on
his rebellion against the overly ”serious”
Germanic symphonic tradition, and his
innovative piano miniatures and compositional
experiments, notably Trois Gymnopédies,
Trois Gnossiennes and the more
substantial Parade.
SIR FREDERICk AShTON CBE
Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador
in 1904 and determined to become a
dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance
in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London,
he studied with Leonide Massine and later
with Marie Rambert (who encouraged his first ventures
in choreography) as well as dancing briefly
in Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928-9). A Tragedy of
Fashion was followed by further choreographies
(Capriol Suite, Façade, Les Rendezvous), until in 1935
he accepted de Valois’ invitation to join her Vic-Wells
Ballet as dancer and choreographer. It was in 1935,
too, that Ashton began a long creative association with Margot
Fonteyn, for whom he would create many great roles over 25 years.
Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells, Ashton choreographed
for revues and musicals. His career would also embrace opera, film
and international commissions, creating ballets in New York, Monte
Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen and Milan. During the War, he served in
the RAF before creating Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells
Ballet’s 1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming
a new spirit of classicism and modernity in English postwar ballet.
During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created
around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scenes de ballet
and Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously
played the Ugly Sisters. He created La fille mal gardée (1960)
for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn
Seymour and Christopher Gable, and The Dream (1964) for Antoinette
Sibley and Anthony Dowell.
Appointed Associate Director of the Royal Ballet in 1952, it was under
Ashton’s direction that after 1970 the company rose to new
heights. His choreographic career continued with Monotones
(1965), Jazz Calendar, Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the
Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter
(1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.
Now named Founder Choreographer of the Royal Ballet and knighted
in 1962, Sir Frederick died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in
the international repertory undiminished, show a remarkable versatility,
a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality, and an equal facility
in recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single
artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet
style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.
FAÇADE
Façade is that very rarest of English creatures,
an enduringly popular success and
at the same time a definitively modern
work of art. It began in the Chelsea home
of the aristocratic and artistic Sitwell siblings,
where the young William Walton
was lodging. Walton (who had just been
humiliatingly turned down by Diaghilev
for a Ballets Russes commission, despite
the Sitwells’ enthusiastic promotion)
composed a scintillating score of pastiche
musical numbers to accompany
Edith Sitwell’s avant garde poems, recited
through a megaphone from behind a
surrealist front curtain.
Its Aeolian Hall premiere in 1923 was
greeted with contemptuous derision, reinforced
by Noel Coward’s skit “The Swiss
Family Whittlebot” in his popular revue
London Calling. But in Frederick Ashton’s
choice of Walton’s music for a ballet divertissement
created for the Camargo
Society in 1931, Façade attained genuine
popularity and has never looked back.
In that 1931 premiere, Alicia Markova
danced the Polka, Lydia Lopokova doubled
as the Milkmaid and the Tango
dancer, whilst Ashton himself played the
Dago. Façade’s sophisticated wit caught
the mood of the twenties; and its instant popularity
brought it into the repertoires of Rambert’s Ballet
Club, the Vic-Wells Ballet (1935, with Fonteyn’s Polka
and Ashton’s Dago leading the cast) and the Royal
Ballet, from whose repertoire it is never absent long.
Ashton made various revisions over the years. A Country
Dance was added in 1935 (and later dropped). The
Foxtrot dates from 1940, when John Armstrong created new designs
after the original sets and costumes were lost in the Sadler’s Wells
Ballet’s dramatic flight from the Nazi invasion of Holland. Following
the adoption of Walton’s Popular Song as the theme tune for
the long-running British TV show “Face The Music,” Façade was performed
in 1972 at The Snape Maltings and Sadler’s Wells with Peter
Pears reciting the Sitwell poems.
But the ballet remains, intact and much-loved. Ashton’s tonguein-cheek
tribute to the Bloomsbury Movement. Walton’s knowing
take on the popular songs and dances of the twenties. With a generous
dash of genteel camp. A very English marriage of high art
and sheer enjoyment.
WILLIAM WALTON
Façade
24–26 February 2012
FSU Center for the Performing Arts
choreography Sir Frederick Ashton
music William Walton
design John Armstrong
Staged by Margaret Barbieri
first Performed at
the cambridge Theatre
26 April 1931
The English composer, Sir William Walton, knighted in 1951 and
awarded the Order of Merit in 1967, made his mark in the late
1920s as a modernist with early successes like Façade, but it is on
his more substantial orchestral, symphonic and choral works, from
the 1931 oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast onwards, that his reputation
rests. Influenced by Stravinsky, Sibelius and jazz, Walton’s work
embraced film scores, chamber and ceremonial music, choral and
orchestral works.
Born into a musical family in Oldham Lancashire, the 10-year-old
Walton became a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford and
subsequently entered Christ Church College as a 16-year-old undergraduate,
at a time when “The House” was the fashionable centre
of Oxford’s jeunesse dorée, who took him up enthusiastically.
first Performed by The Sarasota Ballet
25 January 2008
Largely self-taught, Walton studied the
works of Stravinsky, Delius and Sibelius,
and began composing, but was sent
down from Oxford for failing his exams in
1920, moving in with the Sitwells in London
and associating with the 1920s avant
garde: Noel Coward, Lytton Strachey, Cecil
Beaton, Rex Whistler and Diaghilev’s
Ballets Russes entourage and artistic collaborators.
The concert overture Portsmouth Point
(1925) and Façade (1926) were followed
by his first work to make major impact,
the Viola Concerto (1929) and through
the 1930s Walton’s reputation grew, with
his 1st Symphony (1935), Crown Imperial
(1937) for the coronation of George VI and
Violin Concerto (1939). Walton was exempted
from active service during World
War II to create his masterly film scores including
Olivier’s Henry V, Hamlet and Richard
III. In all, Walton scored 14 feature films
(1934 – 1969).
After the War, Walton composed his 2nd
String Quartet (1946), dedicated many
years to his opera Troilus & Cressida (1954),
which was not a major success, and subsequently
turned his attention to orchestral
works such as his Cello Concerto (1956),
2nd Symphony (1960) and Variations on
a Theme by Hindemith (1963). In 1949 he
settled on the Adriatic island of Ischia with his Argentine
wife Susana, where he died in 1983, having
found composition of new work very difficult during
his final decade, a 3rd Symphony, for André Previn being
abandoned after several attempts.
Alexander Grant CBE • 1925 - 2011
Alexander Grant and Iain Webb
Alexander,
Thank you for your tremendous support.
You will be greatly missed by us all,
but forever in our hearts.
Iain, Margaret & the dancers of The Sarasota Ballet
www.SarasotaBallet.org | Box Office: 359-0099 x101 | The Sarasota Ballet 49