An Affair To Remember

By Michael Walsh

Sir Frederick Ashton gives a new twist to an old story

Crepuscular clouds drift lazily across a Crayola orange sky. To the right, a mauve villa, ornamented by a dazzling splash of tropical trees; to the left, an azure pool, inviting in look but impossible in perspective. Four couples, paired in matching pinks, yellows, lilacs and greens, disport themselves playfully while the estate's elegant mistress lounges provocatively on a poolside chaise. Suddenly a stranger springs into this daydreamer's view of a motley Mediterranean paradise: a macho greaser in shades, tight white pants and black silk shirt. The woman rises and sniffs the wind. This is Italy; an affair is in the air. This is also ballet: they dance. Passion and the poetry of movement mingle in the languid summer eve. But things are not quite what they seem.

Sir Frederick Ashton has done it again. In his new work, Varii Capricci, given its world premiere last week in New York City by London's Royal Ballet, Britain's leading choreographer, 78, has spun a fragile comic fable of misdirected lust, a brief encounter that demonstrates Ashton's continuing mastery of psychologically revealing nuance, even when the subject is a mere wisp. Set to a spunky scare by the late Sir William Walton and played out against a disarmingly evocative set by Artist David Hockney, Varii Capricci also revives one of ballet's most brilliant partnerships, that of Dancers Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell.

Sibley, 44, and Dowell, 40, have not danced together regularly since 1976, when Sibley retired after a knee operation. The couple that first breathed life into the Ashton classic The Dream (1964) and danced together in 18 other ballets won renown as one of the most poignant and refined in dance history: a sleek, sensuous welding of two bodies into a single winged entity. In 1980, at Ashton's urging, Sibley made her comeback at a charity gala in London: "Get up there and dance," commanded Sir Frederick, and she did.

Varii Capricci finds both soloists in splendid form, but paradoxically playing against type; Ashton seems to have in mind a parody not only of his own romantic aesthetic but also of the origin of the fabled partnership as well. Here is the regal Sibley, the gossamer Titania of The Dream, reduced to a semislattern with one thing on her mind. Here is the princely Dowell, once her dashing Oberon, as an even more unsatisfying lover, a sexually indeterminate gigolo with Saturday-night fever. At the end of the first, teasingly erotic pas de deux, Dowell effortlessly lifts Sibley aloft and, in one graceful, fluid motion, floats her offstage. The gesture promises a lovers' private communion. Yet, in the end, it turns out to be only funning foreplay: the stranger, it seems, is less interested in the lady of the house than he is in regaining his sunglasses and patting his pompadour back into place.

If Ashton's Capricci is a lighthearted, winking jape, it is also a winning tribute to a major figure in British music. Just before his death at his villa on the Italian island of Ischia (the inspiration for Hockney's set), Walton had put the finishing touches to his score. The music is carefully crafted and sparklingly orchestrated with sprinkles of harp, celesta and xylophone--qualities that are reflected in Sir Frederick's deft choreography. Like his great colleague George Balanchine, Ashton has an unerring ability to match movement with sound in a way that slights neither, creating something fresh and whole to charm the eye and resonate in the soul. --By Michael Walsh This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.