SIR FREDERICK ENTRUSTS HIS ‘DREAM’ TO JOFFREY

LONDON — The graciously lyrical ballets of Sir Frederick Ashton are a quintessential summation of that soft and pliant style of dancing that the British have refined to polished perfection.

These days, Ashton, who turned 83 on Sept. 17, is regarded as one of England’s national treasures, but that wasn’t always the case. Early in his career, which began in the 1930s, his choreography was sometimes considered too controversial, occasionally even dismissed.

“It was only when the Americans started to appreciate me (during tours of the United States in the postwar ‘40s) that people in England began to say, ‘Oh, perhaps he has got something,’ ” Ashton recalled earlier this month. “They needed proof, you see. No one is ever a prophet in his own land. The enormous acclaim in America is what actually started it here.”

No American has done more to solidify that reputation than Robert Joffrey. Since 1969, his company has staged nine of Ashton’s works, including “La Fille mal Gardee,” “The Dream,” “Monotones I and II” and “Les Patineurs,” all to be seen during the three-week Joffrey Ballet engagement at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion beginning Wednesday.

“I’m very proud of our Ashton works,” said Joffrey recently on the phone from New York. “He is one of the most important choreographers of our time and his works are a great artistic challenge to our dancers. His ballets all have such a marvelous sense of style. Also, we’ve been very lucky in working with some marvelous people on these productions.”

Alexander Grant, who supervised the Joffrey productions of both “La Fille” and “The Dream,” is a longtime associate of Ashton’s and danced Bottom in the original production of “The Dream.”

This one-act ballet, based on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was first created for the Royal Ballet in 1964 as a part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s birth. It went on to become one of Ashton’s best-loved and most enduring works. The Joffrey first danced “The Dream” in 1973 but never in Los Angeles until this season.

Grant, who had just come back to London from Joffrey rehearsals in New York, arrived at Ashton’s flat carrying a sack full of elegantly wrapped packages, presents from American friends to mark Sir Frederick’s birthday.

“I do wish people would stop sending me presents,” Ashton groaned good-naturedly. “One never knows what to say.”

A small man with a distinctive profile worthy of Edith Sitwell or Elizabeth I, Ashton exuded dignity and polished manners.

He’d been spending the afternoon trying to deal with his mail. The stacks of airmail envelopes, as blue as his silk cravat, accumulated during his summer stay in the country. He arranged them in vague piles all around the room and gradually tried to plow through them, though, one suspects, his heart really wasn’t in it.

“I’ve got to send Joffrey a great whacking present for opening night,” he said. Much as he would like to do so, he’s never seen any of the Joffrey productions of his ballets. Ashton maintained that his days of traveling are now over.

“Airports,” he said in a withering tone that made the word sound more repulsive than a third-class cattle train from Bombay to Calcutta. “I simply cannot cope with airports anymore.”

“It was all arranged for me to take Fred over for ‘Fille’ last year,” said Grant, “but at the last minute it was called off. He had the perfect excuse: He had to squire the Queen Mother to the theater.”

“Of course I would like to see my ballets,” Ashton added. “Having other companies do them is a bit like giving away kittens. One tends to worry about them and hope that they’ll be all right, but then one must have faith and trust in the people I delegate to take my place, like Alexander.”

“You would be pleased,” Grant reassured him. “They really do it very well. They’re very conscientious about getting it right. In fact, I think the corps de ballet is the most precise I’ve ever seen.”

Grant, who had coached several casts for the upcoming Joffrey performances of “Dream,” vividly remembered the days of working on the role of Bottom in the original production. He had particularly strong memories of the transformation scene when the character is turned into an ass.

Ashton craftily decided that one of the swiftest ways of depicting the magic was to have Bottom dance in pointe shoes. Not only did it look as if his feet shrunk to the size of hoofs, but it also gave Bottom a giddy otherworldly quality.

“I kept telling the boys who were learning the role to be sure and put tape on their toes,” said Grant. “You see, men haven’t had all those years of toughening that ballerinas go through. But they didn’t listen to me and they all ended up with blisters on their big toes. It’s all right now. Once you’ve gone through that, you’re not quick to forget your padding.”

American dancers are notoriously larger movers than the English. The gracious softness so prized by Ashton is not a quality that is naturally fostered in Americans, with their penchant for speed and their almost greedy appetite for devouring huge chunks of space.

“Today’s dancers can all do much more than we could in our time,” Ashton commented. “But, on the other hand, I think we were all better artists. Because our techniques weren’t as they are today, we had to exercise ourselves more to make an impact.

“I think we performed better than they do now. I mean, we weren’t so interested in getting our legs up behind our ears, or anything of that sort. Not that we could’ve, either, but now, with technique so developed, choreographers tend to use it simply for its own sake. They’re so busy tying everybody up in knots that they don’t have time to express anything because they’re so busy executing.”

Ashton insists that his days as a choreographer are over. “I don’t think about doing ballets anymore. Sometimes I hear a piece of music and I think, ‘Oh well, if only I’d heard that 10 years ago, then it would have been a different matter,’ but, no, I am no longer active.”

“My contemporaries are all vanishing, dying off,” he said. “(George) Balanchine, Anton Dolin, Serge Lifar and myself were all born in the same year, 1904. Now, I’m the only one left. If you’d told me 20 years ago that I would be 83, I wouldn’t have believed you. It seems such a vast age.”

Ashton officially retired as director of the Royal Ballet in 1970 but continued to create ballets for several more years. His late masterwork, “A Month in the Country,” dates from 1976 and, like “The Dream,” is a one-act story ballet that conveys a depth of meaning with a minimum of mime.

Balanchine defined the tone and energy of the 20th Century with his unique angular streamlining, but Ashton’s movement is more atmospheric, more pinpointed to a character, a situation, a specific story. This specificity is perhaps his greatest gift. It arises, like Balanchine’s talents, from an innate musicality.

“I never knew what the steps were going to be before I entered the rehearsal room,” Ashton said, “but I did know exactly who would be doing what at each moment in the music. The music is the key, you see. It tells you what should happen and once you’ve plotted out the story and the music, side by side, then the steps will come very quickly and, one hopes, very naturally.”

There are Royal Ballet legends of Ashton creating large swaths of movement very rapidly, of completing whole pas de deux in the process of just a couple of rehearsals.

“Choreography was my job,” he maintained of those days. “One couldn’t stand around waiting for the muse to descend. One just got on with it.” That sounds very much like Balanchine, but the same musical sensibilities created an entirely different milieu.

Whereas Balanchine strove to customize classicism for a modern age, Ashton seems to have seen himself as merely one step along a gradually evolving path. If Balanchine reinterpreted the rules of Marius Petipa, Ashton deftly found his own manner for continual refinement.

“I was trained in the classical school. That’s my idiom. You know, it’s like being born French or Portuguese. It’s my language and that’s what I speak. Oh, early on, I was a bit affected by a kind of middle-European modernism. I even used a certain amount of (Isadora) Duncanisms. I did one or two barefoot ballets, but never anything so far gone as Martha Graham. No, classicism, for me, encompasses everything.”

Anna Pavlova was Ashton’s first inspiration. He was a child in Peru (where he was born) when he first saw her perform. He immediately knew that he wanted to be a dancer. There is something of the ethereal magic and delicacy of that bygone age in most of Ashton’s major creations.

“Pavlova was astonishing,” remembered Ashton, “and, oh my, who could forget those curtain calls? She used to do ‘The Dying Swan,’ which is a 2 1/2-minute ballet, and then spend 10 minutes taking her calls. It became a whole dance without music.”

Ashton himself is renowned for his bows. His appearance in front of the curtain is guaranteed to set any dance audience cheering. These days, his manner is as noble as a monarch’s. “It used to be that I would take my calls in the role of ‘Poor little me, oh you liked that? Thank you so very much.’

“Now that I’m old,” he said with a laugh, “it’s grand little me. Don’t misunderstand me: I love the applause. It is deeply gratifying.”

“If you know anything about the language of mime,” added Grant with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “then you know exactly what Sir Fred is saying.”