If I were director of the Royal Ballet, Frederick Ashton's Ondine would be high on my list of vexed repertory. Simply, what's to be done with it? As one of the few full length ballets Ashton choreographed it has obvious historical interest and it contains moments of curious and beautiful poetry. Yet its style and concept are stuck in a no-man's-land between 50s period pieces and classic -which makes it baffling to many modern viewers.
The story of Ondine, a water sprite who bewitches a man then unwittingly destroys him, has all the resonances of 19th century Romantic ballet. The tug between glamorous illusion and unforgiving reality, between the capriciousness of nature and the moral burden of being human is something that Ashton, as a traditionalist, knows how to choreograph. Yet Hans Werner Henze's score - dark, churning and introspective - cries out for a much more contemporary vision, which Ashton was not the artist to produce. Even though he manages to tell his own story, the choreography often sits uneasily on the surface of the music.
So while the writing for Ondine and Palemon moves with a silvery brightness that's warmed by moments of extraordinary tenderness, it's lumped with some of Ashton's most disastrous attempts at modernity - chorus routines from a naff stage musical. Lila de Nobili's designs also have an almost Blakean fluidity yet her version of contemporary zip includes chestnut bubble wigs and seaweedy fringing that are too wincing ever to become retro.
It's possible that powerful, even wayward performances of the two big roles could force some dramatic coherence out of these disparate elements. But on Tuesday Miyako Yoshida as Ondine and Bruce Sansom as Palemon played their roles obediently straight. Both are fine Ashton dancers, capable of subtle nuance and elegant line, yet Sansom doesn't risk filling in the essential blank of Palemon's character and Yoshida isn't fey and dangerous enough as the flirtatious sprite. More interesting is Ricardo Cervera (beginning to storm up through company ranks), who brings a genuine exotic frisson to Tirrenio, the sea king.
One solution to Ondine would be to get the score edited and excise the clunkier non-essential bits of choreography. The other, which the Royal seems to have settled on, is to dust the ballet off only once every decade, just to remind us that it's there.
