Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton.

by Julie Kavanagh (Faber and Faber, London, $50.00)

The career of Frederick Ashton (1904-88) bridged some of the most fruitful periods in British artistic and social history. Ashton hobnobbed with aristocracy and with the Bright Young Things and inherited the last vestiges of the Diaghilev legacy through his associations with Ninette de Valois and with Leonide Massine, one of his formidable rival choreographers in the Britain of the late thirties and early forties. Into the mix were thrown his early childhood in Ecuador and Peru (where he first saw Pavlova, who became a lifelong obsession), his work in opera and revue, his love for English literature fostered by a sympathetic schoolmaster, his none-too-admirable military career during World War II, and his numerous, frequently unrequited, love affairs--the not-so-secret "muses" of the title.

Julie Kavanagh, a former dancer and choreographer who later read English at Oxford and is now London editor of The New Yorker, became friendly with Ashton later in his life. After many conversations with him and extensive research, she has produced an extraordinarily readable, totally absorbing account of his life and art. Kavanagh manages to present the personal side of Ashton in a manner that combines good taste and a matter-of-fact approach, with no stinting on the racier aspects of his relationships and conflicts. Ashton appeared to prefer the role of the pursuer to that of the pursued, no doubt in part because he was much less physically attractive than the (mostly) beautiful young men to whom he was drawn. The handsome dancer Michael Somes (who later married three times) seems to have been one of his permanently enshrined muses. Regrettably, before his own death Somes destroyed all of Ashton's letters to him. Nevertheless, Ashton also maintained many satisfying, usually platonic, relationships with women, not a few of whom fell in love with him and in some cases proposed marriage. In one funny-pathetic scene, a slightly inebriated Nora Kaye dramatically declares her love during a taxi ride.

More important, Kavanagh gives us a view of the intellectual and creative cauldron that was bubbling at the time of the birth of the Vic-Wells (later Sadler's Wells and, finally, Royal) Ballet: We meet Marie Rambert, Lord (Gerald) Berners, Constant Lambert, Benjamin Britten, Cecil Beaton, the Sitwells, Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, Margot Fonteyn (who carried on a long affair with Lambert in her early twenties), Oliver Messel, John Gielgud, Lydia Lopokova, John Maynard Keynes, and numerous others.

We are also treated to glimpses of weekends at the great country houses of the upper class. Ashton, a cosmopolite, fluent in Spanish and French, and a great mimic and storyteller, seems to have rivaled our own Arianna Stassinopoulos Hufffington in the social-climbing department. Late in his life he became one of the favorite guests of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, and one of the illustrations (which are mostly too small and poorly reproduced) shows Ashton teaching the Princess's daughter Mrs. TiggyWinkle's dance from the film Tales of Beatrix Potter. His worldly experiences no doubt fed his art, particularly in such acknowledged masterpieces as Enigma Variations and A Month in the Country.

Kavanagh lists chronologically in the index all ballets mentioned in the text--the creation of one of Ashton's most enduring abstract works, Symphonie Variations, is described in fascinating detail--but she does not provide a complete catalog of his oeuvre. Instead, she refers us to David Vaughan's comprehensive study, Frederick Ashton and His Ballets (to be updated and reprinted by Dance Books in London this year). Concentrating on the man himself, she provides us with a continuously fascinating read. Nevertheless, as with all artist biographies, we can never pluck out the heart of their mystery: how do they draw the work out of themselves? We can read, avidly and happily, about all of the influences and forces that contributed to Ashton the artist, but we can never really know how these coalesced into his wonderful dance legacy. (The book can be ordered from Dance Books at its fax number, 011 44 171 497-0473; it is presently unavailable in the U.S.)

One of Ashton's chief mentors, Dame Ninette de Valois, born Edris Stannus in Ireland in 1898, holds joint title with Rambert as the mother of British ballet. Beth Genne, in The Making of a Choreographer: Ninette de Valois and Bar aux Folies-Bergere, has written a lively, information-packed monograph on de Valois's early years, haphazard training, acceptance into the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, and eventual decision to create a British ballet company of the highest quality. The overwhelming success of this venture, the present Royal Ballet, attests to her iron will and complete dedication to her art.

De Valois was fortunate in that her genteel widowed mother did not object to her training for the theater. She was placed in the ballet division of an all-purpose children's theatrical school and also studied sporadically with a few other teachers. However, it is amazing to read that she never had a daily ballet class until she joined the Diaghilev troupe in 1923.

After three years with Diaghilev, de Valois left the company to strike out on her own. A large part of this book deals with her development as one of the relatively few important women ballet choreographers, specifically with her 1934 ballet, Bar aux Folies-Bergere, inspired by the famous Manet painting. De Valois's extensive notes for this work were found among Rambert's papers. Genne's monograph, complete with photographs and artworks from the belle epoque, is a valuable addition to any dance library.