For an art form obsessed with tradition, ballet is surprisingly bad at preserving its own history. Works drop out of the repertoire and are never seen again. Context is lost. Lovers of Frederick Ashton therefore owe the Sarasota Ballet and its director Iain Webb, a former dancer with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, a great debt for its loving preservation of his work. Since he arrived at the company in 2007, he and his assistant director and wife Margaret Barbieri have carefully revived many rarely seen pieces.
The Florida company’s triple bill is a perfect way to kick off Ashton Celebrated, a Royal Ballet mini-season devoted to its founding choreographer. The revelation was Dante Sonata, which sends 22 dancers flooding across the tiny stage in movement at once uninhibited and highly sculptural. Designed by Sophia Fedorovitch and set to Liszt as arranged by Constant Lambert, it was premiered in 1940 at a point when the future of the world seemed in doubt.
