Amos Child (Aud Jebsen Young Dancer, The Royal Ballet) dancing Ashton’s Prince Florimund variation from The Sleeping Beauty, Act II during filming for Ashton in Competiton. Ph Rachel Thomas.
The Frederick Ashton Foundation announces the launch of Ashton in Competition: A Resource for Young Dancers, a new digital offering designed to support and promote the performance of Ashton’s choreography in international ballet competitions.
Developed as part of the Foundation’s wider mission to enrich, preserve and advance Ashton’s legacy for generations to come, Ashton in Competition has been created for young dancers and their teachers, enabling them to deepen their understanding of the choreographer’s style and artistry—and bring that understanding to the stage.
The resource features six solos from The Sleeping Beauty, Sylvia, Birthday Offering and La Fille mal gardée, offering a range of technical and artistic challenges for competition candidates at different stages of development. Filmed coaching sessions with The Royal Ballet’s Aud Jebsen Young Dancers are led by distinguished former Royal Ballet dancers and expert teachers Leanne Benjamin, Ricardo Cervera and Helen Crawford, and supplemented with contextual notes, piano recordings and Benesh Movement Notation scores to guide rehearsal and performance.
Leanne Benjamin coaching Yuki Nagayasu (Aud Jebsen Young Dancer, The Royal Ballet) in Lise’s variation from the ‘Fanny Elssler’ pas de deux in Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée during filming for Ashton in Competiton. Ph Rachel Thomas.
Ashton in Competition has been carefully curated to form part of a dancer’s wider artistic journey, encouraging exploration of movement quality, musical phrasing, stylistic nuance and personal interpretation. While it serves as a practical competition tool, reflective engagement with the resource is intended to go beyond this, fostering genuine artistic growth alongside a lasting connection with Ashton’s work.
Jeanetta Laurence, Chair of The Frederick Ashton Foundation, said:
For Ashton’s choreography to thrive in the future, young dancers must have the opportunity to experience it for themselves today. This initiative places his work in the practice studios and ambitions of young dancers around the world, allowing them to engage with this heritage not just as history, but as part of their own artistic journey.
The first major collaboration involving Ashton in Competition will see the Royal Academy of Dance incorporate the resource into the 2026 Margot Fonteyn International Ballet Competition. All candidates will study one of the six featured variations, with finalists performing their chosen solo at the London Coliseum in November—an event that will be livestreamed.
Further discussions are under way with other leading international competitions, extending access to Ashton’s distinctive movement language and creative legacy to new generations of dancers.
June 2026