Naturally every season contains a certain amount of Ashton but never to the degree he will be this year,” she said.”The last time we did an enormous homage to him was 1970 with a big gala performance in New York – he was very, very popular in America – and another big one in London. At the time people like Dame Margot Fonteyn and Sir Robert Helpman, all the people who inspired him, were still alive. But they’re not now.”This is probably the last time you could have a season quite this large honouring him Time moves on. But 100 years is a very special landmark and it’s entirely appropriate that this season we’re filled with Ashton from start to finish.”One of his most famous partnerships was with the dancer Margot Fonteyn for whom he created leading roles for a quarter of a century “It was a unique relationship. She happened to be there when he was starting to make his works and she inspired him,” Miss Mason said. “He loved the person that she was and she could recognise the genius that he was. They needed each other.”But he also produced works for other ballet greats such as Rudolph Nureyev and roles such as the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella, one of which he memorably created on stage himself with Helpman as the other high-camp turn.Frederick Ashton was born on 17 September 1904 in Ecuador to English parents and raised in Peru.

After seeing Anna Pavlova perform in Lima when he was 13, his heart was set on the world of dance. The following year, he was sent to school in England where the passion was further inflamed by seeing Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He soon began to study dance with one of the Ballets Russes’ leading choreographers, L?ide Massine, and had a brief career on stage in Paris before returning to England and work with Marie Rambert.Ross MacGibbon, the BBC’s head of dance, said Rambert was crucial in encouraging Ashton to choreograph. “He was dancing in her company, but she was the one who saw his potential and showed him he could choreograph and not just dance – because not many people can. He watched her work and she helped form him as a choreographer.” His first big success, Fa?e, in 1931, is regularly revived. But within four years, he had been invited to join de Valois’s company, which was then performing at the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells, but was the core of what would became the Royal Ballet.Miss Mason said: “She was looking for someone who could set the style and general tone for the work at the start of this organisation. The extraordinary thing about Dame Ninette was she always believed it was possible to set up a national ballet company.”He went on to create full-length traditional ballets such as Sylvia and Ondine as well short dramatic works like Daphnis and Chlo?Alongside his narrative pieces, he also produced abstract works such as Symphonic Variations.And even after his official retirement from the Royal Ballet in 1970, he continued to work.

For services to British ballet, Ashton was created a CBE in 1950 and was knighted in 1962. Now 16 years after his death at the age of 83, the centenary of his birth is being celebrated off stage as well as on.Oberon Books is producing the most comprehensive book of images of Ashton and his works ever published. Taken from the Royal Opera House archives, personal snapshots and works by Cecil Beaton, the £20 volume charts Ashton’s life in 130 photographs.The season is further accompanied by free exhibitions of photographs, costumes and designs relating to Ashton’s work in the Opera House, which is open to the public free during the day. An academic examination of his work and influence will take place in a separate series of events. And for those who cannot get to Covent Garden in person, BBC4 is stepping in with its own contribution.After broadcasting Ashton’s Cinderella last Christmas, this November the channel is showing a triple bill of Sc?s de Ballet: one of his acknowledged masterpieces, Daphnis and Chlo?nd some divertissements. And in February, it is showing La Fille Mal Gard?Ross MacGibbon, who danced with the Royal Ballet in many Ashton works before joining the BBC, said it was a pleasure to be making such a big commitment to showing these works to a wider public.

“Ashton and Balanchine and Kenneth MacMillan are the three most important choreographers of the 20th century in terms of ballet. They’re all dead and everyone is desperately trying to find the next one,” Mr MacGibbon said. “Ashton had such a range and his works were technically demanding. The Americans make a great fuss about Balanchine and it is right that we in Britain should take Ashton seriously His pieces .. don’t look dated.”. “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,” wrote the renaissance author Sir Francis Bacon. The response proves a salutary lesson to any newspaper proprietor who has a stereotypical view of his (or her) readership. The selection was as unpredictable as it was diverse, ranging from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath to John Dos Passos’s USA.