Francesca Hayward, Soloist of The Royal Ballet performs Frederick Ashtons signature move; 'the Fred step'.
‘Arabesque,
fondu, coupé, petit developpé, pas de bourée, pas de chat’. This
sequence is the Fred Step – one of the most famous motifs in ballet. It
takes its nickname from The Royal Ballet’s Founder Choreographer,
Frederick Ashton, who included this enchaînement in almost all his
ballets.
Though it is known as his choreographic signature,
Ashton himself often referred to the sequence as the ‘Pavlova’,
acknowledging the prima ballerina from whom he borrowed it. Ashton had
first seen Anna Pavlova perform in Peru - the land of his birth - when
he was just 13, and later described how her performance inspired him:
‘She injected me with her poison and from the end of that evening I
wanted to dance’. The Fred Step was originally part of a gavotte that
Pavlova performed to ‘The Glow Worm’, part of an operetta by Paul
Lincke. After Pavlova's death in 1931, Ashton – who thought of her ‘when
I’m working all the time’ – came to regard it as his talisman.
‘Arabesque,
fondu, coupé, petit developpé, pas de bourée, pas de chat’. This
sequence is the Fred Step – one of the most famous motifs in ballet. It
takes its nickname from The Royal Ballet’s Founder Choreographer,
Frederick Ashton, who included this enchaînement in almost all his
ballets.
Though it is known as his choreographic signature,
Ashton himself often referred to the sequence as the ‘Pavlova’,
acknowledging the prima ballerina from whom he borrowed it. Ashton had
first seen Anna Pavlova perform in Peru - the land of his birth - when
he was just 13, and later described how her performance inspired him:
‘She injected me with her poison and from the end of that evening I
wanted to dance’. The Fred Step was originally part of a gavotte that
Pavlova performed to ‘The Glow Worm’, part of an operetta by Paul
Lincke. After Pavlova's death in 1931, Ashton – who thought of her ‘when
I’m working all the time’ – came to regard it as his talisman.
