Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Frederick Ashton’s genius is being celebrated at Covent Garden this month with fine revivals of old favourites and rarities danced by the Royal Ballet and the Sarasota Ballet, which made its UK debut at the Linbury Theatre.The Florida company was founded in 1987, but it was only in 2007, under the direction of former Royal Ballet dancer Iain Webb, that the emphasis shifted to Ashton. The repertoire now includes 30 pieces, 11 of which have been brought to London. These seldom-seen works and extracts are a reminder of Ashton’s stylistic range — everything from the barefoot expressionism of Dante Sonata to the revue-like gaiety of Façade.Tuesday’s strongly danced triple bill began with Ashton’s swoony, wistful take on Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, which premiered in 1947. Sarasota’s well-drilled couples inhabit Sophie Fedorovich’s debs-and-dancecards setting with smiling conviction, led by Jessica Assef swivelling undecidedly between two romantic possibilities (a cheeky nod to Sleeping Beauty).Dante Sonata, an expression of the futility of war created in 1940 to Liszt’s Fantaisie, quasi Sonate: d’après une lecture de Dante, slipped from the schedules in 1950 but was exhumed half a century later for Birmingham Royal Ballet by Jean Beddells. The solos have an almost Duncanesque abandon while the sculptural ensembles echo engravings of The Divine Comedy. Fedorovich’s timeless backdrop distils a John Flaxman image to its essence: a curl of gun smoke; a stairway to heaven.The programme closed with 1967’s Sinfonietta set to a Malcolm Williamson score and not seen in the UK since 1981. In the central Elegy Jennifer Hackbarth, dressed in a silvery unitard, is smoothly posed and manhandled by a male quintet — a trick eerily similar to the brothel scene in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon created seven years later.★★★★☆Meanwhile, up in the main house, the Royal Ballet unveiled a triple bill of masterpieces spanning six decades. 1964’s The Dream, an ingenious 55-minute précis of Shakespeare’s five-act comedy, was led by Marcelino Sambé and Francesca Hayward coached by Ashton muses Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley (bouquets and ovations for both). 1980’s Rhapsody riffs dazzlingly on the classical tropes — variations, vision scenes — just as Rachmaninov plays with Paganini’s theme. It made a natural finale, but the programme’s highlight was unquestionably Les Rendezvous, written in 1933 to a score by Daniel Auber. The flirtatious afternoon in the park is a summertime companion piece to Ashton’s snowy Les Patineurs, packed with witty vignettes and fiendish choreography. Back in 2000 the ballet was almost killed off by Anthony Ward’s cartoonish redesign — brash polka-dot frocks, a Teletubby landscape — but has now been set and dressed by Jasper Conran in an elegant palette of Payne’s grey and Indian yellow plus creamy white for the star couple. Reece Clarke made impressively light work of the fast-forward bravura steps, soaring high and landing softly. Marianela Nuñez, fresh from her triumph at the Paris Opera, took delight in revealing the wonders of the choreography, her head, neck and torso curling impossibly as she smiled through Ashton’s variations, the simplest pirouette becoming a display of his (and her) total mastery of time and space.★★★★★Royal Ballet programme to June 19, roh.org.uk
