| Initially conceived as an incidental ballet based on Leda and the Swan for a stage adaptation of Lion Feughtwanger’s novel Jew Süss by Ashley Dukes, Leda became a standalone ballet when the play was postponed. Choreographed collaboratively by Ashton and Marie Rambert to music from Gluck’s Orpheus, it was first performed at a reception in Rambert’s new studio in Ladbroke Road in June 1928. In 1930, a revised version entitled Leda and the Swan – this time with choreography entirely by Ashton – was performed at the Lyric, Hammersmith, described in the programme as being ‘Botticellian in its spirit and line’. |
CHOREOGRAPHY
Frederick Ashton and Marie Rambert
MUSIC
Christoph Willibald Gluck (ballet music from Orfeo ed Euridice)
COSTUMES
William Chappell
DANCERS
Leda: Diana Gould; Zeus: Frederick Ashton; Hermes: Harold Turner; Ganymede: William Chappell; Naiades: Pearl Argyle, Andrée Howard, Kathleen O’Connor, Irene Kinsey, Joyce Peters, Prudence Hyman
FIRST PERFORMANCE
Marie Rambert’s studio, London, June 1928
Sunshine Matinee, Apollo Theatre, London, 10 July 1928
New Stagings / Productions
Marie Rambert Dancers, 1930
NEW PRODUCTION
Marie Rambert Dancers; revised choreography by Ashton alone, under the title Leda and the Swan
COSTUMES
William Chappell and (for Ashton) Bruce Winston
DANCERS
Leda: Diana Gould; The Swan: Frederick Ashton; Zephyrs: Harold Turner, William Chappell; Nymphs: Pearl Argyle, Andrée Howard, Prudence Hyman, Irene Kinsey, Elisabeth Schooling, Kathleen Suthers
FIRST PERFORMANCE
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 25 February 1930
Copyright © 2004 by David Vaughan. ‘Work note’ © Frederick Ashton Foundation.
This listing is part of a chronology that was originally published in Vaughan’s Frederick Ashton and His Ballets (Alfred E Knopf 1976; 2nd ed., London: Dance Books, 1999) and includes new productions added since then, and up until 2007