Royal Ballet.

The Royal Ballet celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Sir Frederick Ashton, its founder choreographer, who died in 1988, with two programs of his works--five one-act ballets, five pas de deux, and a solo--spanning fifty-four years of his career. it was a long-overdue mini-festival, setting out to prove that the company could still do justice to his ballets.

It could, in the main, despite a spate of injuries affecting many of the scheduled principals. Sarah Wildor, who has shown great promise in solo Ashton roles, was unable to make her debut in Daphnis and Chloe, Symphonic Variations, or La Chatte Metamorphosee en Femme ("The Cat Transformed into a Woman," a gala solo made for Merle Park in 1985). Darcey Bussell, recovering from an ankle operation in July, returned to dance only the Raymonda pas de deux--another gala piece d'occasion, created in 1962 for Svetlana Beriosova and Donald MacLeary.

The real triumph was that of the corps, whose younger members had never seen some of the ballets they were dancing, such as Daphnis and Chloe and La Valse ("The Waltz"). Corps and soloists had been carefully coached by former dancers who know Ashton's style well, including Antoinette Sibley, MacLeary, and Anthony Dowell, the artistic director. Sadly, Michael Somes, who had just successfully mounted Ashton's Enigma Variations for Birmingham Royal Ballet, died before he could complete his coaching sessions with the London company; its Ashton programs were dedicated to his memory.

The centerpiece of the first program, Symphonic Variations (1 946), is revived comparatively rarely because Ashton was so scrupulous about its casting; Somes, who owned the ballet after Ashton's death, respected his wishes. Not surprisingly, the six dancers in the opening performances seemed tense and overreverential, dancing as though the ballet were an examination text rather than "a kind of heavenly tennis" (as one British critic described it in 1946). Casts in The Dream (1964) were far more at ease, thanks to performing it regularly during the 1994 tour of the United States. Viviana Durante has become a fascinating, feral Titania, well-matched with Bruce Sansom's imperious Oberon.

Sansom has, at last, developed into a fine Ashton interpreter, inheriting Somes's roles as well as Dowell's. He was a sympathetic Daphnis to Trinidad Sevillano's Chloe in the 1951 ballet's first revival in ten years. New designs by Martyn Bainbridge evoke a Greece both ancient and modern, with a simple set that allows dramatic revelations of Pan's presence, as he comes to the aid of the lovers. The ballet's spell took some time to make its effect, but with Bernard Haitink conducting Ravel's shimmering score, the magic finally worked.

Fresh designs would have helped restagings of pas de deux from such "lost" ballets as Sylvia (1952-which may yet be revived) and Homage to the Queen (1953), as well as the gala divertissements; better, surely, to acknowledge that today's dancers do not resemble their predecessors, and allow Ashton's quirky 1950s choreography to be seen with fresh eyes.

Different casts discovered that the secret of these bravura pas de deux lies in assuming an air of modesty; then the extravagant lifts and tricky pirouettes, with the center of balance constantly changing, are all the more surprising. Ashton is often thought of as an English miniaturist, delighting in detailed footwork and twisting torsos; these rediscovered display pieces are a reminder that he also loved big effects and Bolshoi lifts--once he had dancers capable of doing them. The Raymonda pas de deux (1962, retrieved from an old film) deserves a permanent place in the repertoire; but then so do Sylvia and Homage to the Queen, if only they could be reconstructed in full.