Frederick Ashton's A Month in the Country: An Evocation of Feminist Practices

Abstract

This article analyzes the influence of women on Frederick Ashton’s choreographic outputs and practices. I argue that narratives that connect Ashton’s aesthetics and Marius Petipa’s and George Balanchine’s approaches due to their shared belief in classicism obfuscate the significant impact of women on Ashton’s work, as well as female dancers’ agency in the development of classicism. By focusing on A Month in the Country (1976), dedicated to Ashton’s mentors Bronislava Nijinska and Sophie Fedorovitch, I demonstrate the importance of women in Ashton’s oeuvre and contend that this ballet may be considered a sensorial archive of past female performance and choreographic practices.