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
Frederick Ashton contributed to West End revues and musicals, including "The Cat and the Fiddle" (1932) for C B Cochran, and "Gay Hussar" (1933), in which "The Manchester Guardian" singled out the "spirited and lovely choreography in the classic manner". Ashton's association with Ninette de Valois, founder of the Vic-Wells Ballet, began in 1931, when he created a comic ballet, "Regatta" for her. It received mixed reviews; "The Times" thought it successful as "a piece of flippant amusement", but "The Manchester Guardian" considered that "it completely fails … definitely a poor show". Nevertheless, Ashton was by now recognised as a choreographer of