A very good friend of Sir Fred's.

DM Although Sir Frederick Ashton's 100th birthday doesn't arrive until September 2004 the world's leading ballet companies are already decorating the cake with candles. The ceutenary celebrations have started in this country, and in Ashton's Britain, where the choreographer's status as the art's supreme native classicist remains unchallenged fifteen years after his death. This season, two stateside troupes, American Ballet Theatre and, in April, San Francisco Ballet, are dancing that elusive masterwork Symphonic Variations; and on December 23 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, England's Royal Ballet will serve up a new production of Ashton's delectable Cinderella, a project already planned for the Royal's transcontinental United States tour next summer. This Cinderella will open fifty-five years to the day after it was unveiled across town at Sadler's Wells; and, if Wend? Somes has anything to say about it--and because she now owns the ballet, she has everything to say--it won't look like many of the Ashton productions of recent years.

"I do not allow certain things to happen that may have been allowed to happen to these ballets," declares Somes, with thoughts of the Royal's recent controversial restagings of Les Rendezvous and Daphnis and Chloe ("dreadful" is her whispered verdict) very much in mind. Somes, who inherited the rights to Symphonic Variations and Cinderella after the death nine years ago of her husband, Michael Stones, danced with the Royal as Wendy Ellis (remembered for originating fine fragile, uncomprehending Princess Stephanie in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling) before retiring to tend the Ashton legacy.

"Cinderella will be done in the traditional way, as Sir Fred might have liked it. Toer van Schayk, who has known the ballet for many years in Holland and who hasn't worked with the Royal since 1970, will design it. And," Somes adds with a twinkle in her eye, "the stepsisters will be Anthony Dowell and Wayne Sleep. Wayne said he would never come back to the Garden unless it was for something very worthwhile." This year, Somes reminds us, also marks the fiftieth anniversary of tim death of Cinderella's composer, Sergei Prokofiev.

INTERVIEWED IN THE midst of rehearsing Symphonic Variations at SF Ballet, where there will be no tampering with Sophie Fedorovitch's "perfect," original designs. Somes confirmed the difficulty of preserving and teaching the Ashton style. "It's because of the port de bras, very simple, yet very difficult. All over the world, I have to work hard with the arms and the epaulement, the angle of the head and the way of moving. They're very different from any other style. Part of it was what Fred took from Cecchetti.

"The men," Somes continues, "also find the partnering very hard. The thing here is I have to blame my husband. Michael simply had this incredible way of partnering Margot [Fonteyn]. He made her look as if she were floating. The piece is a killer. It's so very controlled, yet it must look so fluid, like ... " Somes reaches for a phrase, "like poetry in movement."

What made Symphonic Variations so special in the Ashton canon? In a way, it was a return to normalcy after World War II. "Fred said that if he ever got through this 'bloody war,' he would make a ballet to the Cesar Franck score," Somes recalls. "He envisioned angelic bodies moving through space. The piece certainly brought the house down in 1946."