Frederick Ashton retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970. Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are "Façade" (1931), "Symphonic Variations" (1946), "Cinderella" (1948), "La fille mal gardée" (1960), "Monotones" I and II (1965), "Enigma Variations" (1968) and the feature film ballet "The Tales of Beatrix Potter" (1970). Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George
Anthony Russell-Roberts Anthony Russell-Roberts Anthony de Villeneuve Russell-Roberts CBE, (born 25 March 1944) is a British businessman and opera manager. Russell-Roberts is the son of Francis Douglas Russell-Roberts and the pianist Edith Margaret Gertrudis Russell-Roberts, "née" Ashton. He is the nephew of the dancer and choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton and residual legatee of Ashton's will. Russell-Roberts was educated at Eton College and, after Voluntary Service Overseas in British Honduras, now Belize, (1961–62), at New College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (BA, MA). After graduation, having decided that he was unlikely to succeed in his preferred career as a professional