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Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton

Ha, Steven Kyung-Gyoon
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0102-8940
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607420030830412

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Dance.
“Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton” examines three ballets by the twentieth-century British choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton (1904–1988). I tease apart elements of the aesthetic theories of classicism and romanticism as they manifest in Ashton’s choreography and consider how those aesthetic ideologies relate to representations of gender in performance. I present three case studies from different periods in Ashton’s career: Les Illuminations (1950), The Dream (1964), and Rhapsody (1980). In choosing a selection of ballets across Ashton’s oeuvre, my analysis identifies the strains of romanticism that are crucial to deciphering meaning in each work individually and elucidates the continuous undercurrent of romanticism that challenge conventions of classical ballet. I consider Ashton’s relationship to the art form’s approach to gender and its emphasis of sexual difference through the heterosexual pas de deux, athleticism of male dancers, and perceptions of ballerinas as muses. I demonstrate how Ashton’s ballets subtly reject these conventions. I then situate each ballet in its historical moment, to further explicate how the ballets’ engagements with discourses of gender in dance also refract concomitant sociopolitical circumstances relating to gender and sexuality. I ground each examination in the dance itself and employ choreographic analysis to substantiate the various claims about romanticism/classicism and gender in each ballet; my examination is further supported by scholarship and archival research in the form of critical reviews and personal accounts from the artists involved. Given the differences in era and context of each ballet, each chapter brings into focus a different set of frameworks for analysis. In the chapter on Rhapsody, I consider notions of virtuosity as they relate to gendered norms and the ballet’s reversal of roles in gendering the artist as male and the muse as female. In terms of The Dream, I examine the male fairy body of Oberon and the dynamics of power in a matriarchal society led by Titania and consider their echoes of Victorian ideals of gender and marriage. Lastly, in examining Les Illuminations, I identify the influence of British romanticism to ascertain the ballet’s opposition to dualistic structures such as the Apollonian/Dionysian, and I further speculate on the choreography’s political dimensions as a performance of protest by the dancer Nicholas Magallanes, against a backdrop of the Lavender Scare and racism against migrant workers in the mid-twentieth century in the United States. I argue that Ashton’s ballets exemplify a notion of romantic ballet that acknowledges the sustained influence of nineteenth-century romanticism but resists the nineteenth-century periodization of the “romantic ballet.” This dissertation research thus contributes to scholarship that interrogates labels such as “romantic” and suggests the term’s applicability to twentieth-century works in order to emphasize the complexities of a single work of art. Additionally, in choosing Ashton’s ballets as the focus of this study, I bring scholarly attention to a choreographer who is underrepresented in the field of dance studies.
Karen Eliot, PhD (Committee Chair)
Andrew Shelton, PhD (Committee Member)
Daniel Roberts, MFA (Committee Member)
182 p.
Dance; Gender; Gender Studies; Performing Arts
ballet; classicism; romanticism; gender; sexuality; frederick ashton; dance studies; choreographic analysis

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ha, S. K.-G. (2021). Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607420030830412

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ha, Steven. Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton. 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607420030830412.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ha, Steven. "Classicism and Romanticism in Three Ballets by Frederick Ashton." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607420030830412

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1607420030830412
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
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