Early years Ashton was born in
Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George Ashton (1864–1924) and his second wife, Georgiana (1869–1939),
née Fulcher. George Ashton was manager of the Central and South American Cable Company and vice-consul at the British consulate in Guayaquil. In 1907, the family moved to
Lima, Peru, where Ashton attended a
Dominican school. When they returned to Guayaquil in 1914, he attended a school for children of the English colony. One of his formative influences was serving as an altar boy, which inspired in him a love of ritual, as demonstrated in
The Wise Virgins. Ashton's father sent him to England in 1919 to
Dover College, where he was miserable. Homosexual, and with an accent that his classmates laughed at, he did not fit in at a minor public school of the early 1920s. The costumes and scenery were by
Sophie Fedorovitch, who continued to work with Ashton for more than twenty years, and became, in his words, "not only my dearest friend but my greatest artistic collaborator and adviser". Rambert sought to widen her students' horizons, taking them to see London performances by the Diaghilev Ballet. They had a great influence on Ashton—most particularly
Bronislava Nijinska's ballet
Les biches. In 1930 Ashton created an innovative ballet,
Capriol Suite, using
Peter Warlock's 1926 suite of the
same name. The music was based on 16th-century French music, and Ashton researched the dances of the earlier era, and created a period piece with "
basse danse,
pavane,
tordion, and
bransle—smoothly mixing robust masculine leaps with courtly duets."
Vic-Wells Ashton's association with
Ninette de Valois, founder of the
Vic-Wells Ballet, began in 1931, when he created a
comic ballet,
Regatta for her. but
The Manchester Guardian considered that "it completely fails ... definitely a poor show". Nevertheless, Ashton was by now recognised as a choreographer of considerable talent and had gained a national, though not yet international, reputation. with whom Ashton was associated from 1931 In 1933 Ashton devised another work for de Valois and her company, the ballet-divertissement
Les Rendezvous. Robert Greskovic describes the work as a "classically precise yet frothy excursion showcas[ing] big skirted 'ballet girls' and dashing swain partners". The piece was an immediate success, has been revived many times, and at 2013 remains in the
Royal Ballet's repertoire eighty years after its creation.
Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War Ashton was offered a position in New York with what was to become the
American Ballet Theatre. He declined, and returned to de Valois' company, soon renamed "Sadler's Wells Ballet". In
Ballet magazine, Lynette Halewood commented in 2000, "No other work by Ashton is so disturbing and so bleak". After the end of the war
David Webster invited de Valois to move her company from Sadler's Wells to be resident at the
Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden alongside the new opera company he was establishing. Ashton's first ballet for the company in its new home was
Symphonic Variations (1946). The historian
Montague Haltrecht writes of it, "It is a masterpiece created for the Opera House and for the company's dancers, and almost of itself defines a style of English dancing." Although the Covent Garden stage was much larger than that at Sadler's Wells, Ashton confined himself to six dancers, led by
Margot Fonteyn and
Michael Somes. The work, which remains in the repertoire as at 2013, was a success from the outset. Another plotless ballet was
Scènes de ballet (1947), which remains a repertoire piece. In 1948, at the urging of de Valois, Ashton created his first major three-act ballet for a British company, his version of
Prokofiev's
Cinderella. The original cast included
Moira Shearer as Cinderella, Somes as the Prince,
Alexander Grant as the jester, and Ashton and Helpmann
en travesti as Cinderella's stepsisters. Some critics have commented that Ashton was not yet fully in control of a full-length ballet, with intermittent weaknesses in the choreography, Ashton's second full-length ballet for de Valois' company was
Sylvia (1952). Ashton's biographer
Kathrine Sorley Walker considers that it works "even less well" than
Cinderella, but contemporary reviews praised it with little or no reservation. In 2005, reviewing a New York revival, the critic Jennie Schulman called it a "blockbuster", "radiant" with "choreographic abundance to please even the most finicky of gods and the most demanding of balletomanes". Ashton's third full-length ballet was
Romeo and Juliet for the
Royal Danish Ballet in 1955. It was a considerable success, but Ashton resisted attempts to present it at Covent Garden, which he thought too large a theatre and stage for his intimate treatment of the story. It was not seen in London until 1985 when it was produced by the
London Festival Ballet rather than at Covent Garden.
Royal Ballet In October 1956
Elizabeth II granted Sadler's Wells Ballet a charter, giving it the title of "the Royal Ballet" with effect from 15 January 1957. This recognised the eminence the company had achieved: internationally it was widely regarded as "the leading company outside Russia". De Valois remained the director of the company, with Ashton as principal choreographer. When de Valois retired in 1963, Ashton succeeded her as director. His time in charge was looked on as something of a golden age. Under him, the corps de ballet was recognised as rivalling and even excelling the best anywhere else in the world. He continued to add to the repertoire with his own new productions, he persuaded his former mentor Bronislava Nijinska to revive her
Les biches and
Les noces, and he presented ''
Mam'zelle Angot'' by his other mentor, Massine. He also brought in
Antony Tudor, his English contemporary, better known in the US, to stage both new and old works. Ashton had frequently told colleagues how he looked forward to his own retirement, but nonetheless was hurt by the abruptness with which his departure was arranged and announced by Webster. He stood down in July 1970 after a farewell gala organised by Michael Somes, John Hart and Leslie Edwards. After his retirement, Ashton made several short ballets as ''pièces d'occasion
, but his only longer works were the cinema film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter made in 1970 and released in 1971, and A Month in the Country'' (1976), a one-act piece, lasting about forty minutes, freely adapted from
Turgenev's
comedy of manners. The piece has been revived regularly, in every decade since the premiere. Ashton's last years were marred by the death of his partner, Martyn Thomas, in a car crash in 1985 – a blow from which Ashton never fully recovered. He died in his sleep on 19 August 1988, at his country home in Suffolk, and was buried on 24 August at St Mary's Church,
Yaxley, Suffolk. ==Choreography==