ABSTRACT
Six dancers are standing onstage when the curtain rises, small at first against the verdant expanse behind, and they remain onstage throughout. Their stance - arms calm by their sides, one foot crossed over and resting on its point, head turned toward one shoulder, eyes lowered - is the most characteristic motif of the whole ballet, and it shows a facet of classicism usually ignored by ballet: repose. Upright, the body is relaxed and harmonious. The orchestra calls out metrical figures in brief phrases, and the piano calls out quietly the main theme of the music, like a roll call of the original cast's names ('Margot Fon-teyn . . . Moira S/iear-er . . . '; then 'Michael Somes; Brian Shaw; Henry Dan-ton1), Though Franck quickly embroiders variations on the theme ('and Pam-ela Μ α / ) , he keeps returning to devout announcements of it. The three women, plotted in a row along the front, dance first, to the first piano statement; and their chaste unison - arms often crossing over the body's centre in drastic lines - represents the winter of Ashton 's original conception, as they dance to and fro along the stage's horizontal
foreground. It is the central man who brings the spring. Turning to face us, he slowly advances through a series of piqué fourth positions, raises an arm, and holds a long, limpid gesture that aims past and above the women's zone into the theatre's heights.
