Royal Ballet Ashton triple bill, live transmission Phoenix Picturehouse 7th June 2017

Another live transmission of masterworks from the Royal Ballet‘s historic repertoire coming up shortly at Oxford’s Phoenix Picturehouse, essential viewing for ballet lovers.  This gorgeous mixed programme, part of celebrations of the company’s 70 years of residency at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, demonstrates the great creative vision of Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet.  The Dream is Ashton’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s riotous comedy in which a forest sprite plays havoc, armed with a love potion.  Symphonic Variations was Ashton’s first work after World War II, and one of the Company’s first to be performed on the huge main stage of the Royal Opera House, in 1946. With six dancers performing a series of quartets, duets, sextets and solos to Cesar Franck’s brooding Variations symphoniques, this seminal masterpiece celebrates the pure beauty of movement.  Marguerite and Armand is Ashton’s beautiful and emotional retelling of a well-known story, familiar to us through Verdi’s opera La traviata.  Ashton famously created this poignant ballet on Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in 1963.

Date:  Wednesday 7th June 2017, 7.15pm

Venue:  Phoenix Picturehouse, 57 Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AE

Tickets:  Adults £22, student or retired £17.50, child £10, family ticket for four £64

Book online here or call 0871 902 5736

This transmission will also be screened at The Vue Cinema, Kassam Stadium, details available here and at the Odeon Magdalen Street, details here

 

The Royal Ballet Dances Frederick Ashton, pre-recorded Summer Encore at Phoenix Picturehouse, 15 July 2013 – Maggie Watson reviews

The Royal Ballet’s summer season has drawn to a close, but on Monday we had the chance to see the company’s Frederick Ashton programme, recorded on the night of Tamara Rojo’s farewell performance in February.

The programme opened with La Valse, to music described by its composer Ravel as “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz”.  Originally choreographed by Ashton’s mentor Bronislava Nijinska, to a score that Diaghilev believed inimical to ballet, the sombre, slightly menacing, lighting obscured the dance too much and this did not work well in a cinema.