Pictured: The Sarasota Ballet performs Sacred Love Pas de Cinq from Ashton’s Illuminations at the Linbury Theatre. Photo by Foteini Christofilopoulou.

Last month in London, when The Royal Ballet officially launched Ashton Worldwide, a five-year international celebration of the company’s famed founding choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, only one other ballet company in the world was invited to perform alongside them in the opening festival—The Sarasota Ballet. Now back from the company’s international debut—and with all the rave reviews to accompany—Sarasota Ballet Director Iain Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri look back on a once-in-a-lifetime experience and forward to a 2024-25 season to match it.

“It was an amazing gift for everybody involved,” Webb says, and Barbieri agrees. “But at moments, all a bit surreal,” she adds. Under the leadership of Webb and Barbieri, both former Royal Ballet dancers themselves, the Sarasota Ballet has become recognized worldwide as leading performers and preservers of Ashton’s legacy, often staging even the choreographer’s more obscure works and gaining a reputation for breathing new life into them for modern audiences. Still, an invite from the Royal Ballet came as something of a surprise. “It was enormous pressure,” Webb says with a laugh. “It was in the house of Sir Frederick Ashton!”

Pressure or no, Webb was determined to tackle the opportunity head on. “We need to let people see what we do here,” he remembers thinking. And when the Royal Ballet said that they wanted the Sarasota Ballet to perform six shows in the Linbury Theatre, Webb wrote three separate programs, incorporating seven Ashton pieces: Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Dante Sonata, Sinfonietta, Façade, Dance of the Blessed Spirits, and Varri Capricci. The only catch? Barbieri had approximately three weeks to stage them all.

“More like two weeks,” Barbieri says. “I was in a bit of a frenzy.” Everyone worked around the clock, with Barbieri staging all seven works as fast as she could and dancers bouncing from studio to studio, practicing different choreography. “They all danced their hearts out,” Barbieri says, and it’s Webb’s turn to agree. “The talk of the town was the Sarasota Ballet,” he says, “and the ballets of Sir Frederick Ashton.” And before the festival was up, The Sarasota Ballet would join the Royal Ballet on the mainstage for a collaboration on Ashton’s The Walk in the Paradise Garden.

“We’re proud that we represented Sarasota, and America, on one of the most important stages in the world,” Webb says. “What an incredible gift. It’s something you remember for all of your life.”

Looking forward to the 2024-25 ballet season at home, audiences may have to wait until the company premiere of Romeo and Juliet in March for more Ashton choreography, but the season is full of old favorites and even world premieres so fresh they are as yet untitled.

“The company is known for the ballets of Sir Frederick Ashton and we preserve a lot of his works,” Webb says, “but we’re not just a museum company. There’s quite a lot coming.”

Pictured: The Sarasota Ballet performs Sacred Love Pas de Cinq from Ashton’s Illuminations at the Linbury Theatre. Photo by Foteini Christofilopoulou.

For more on Sarasota Ballet's 2024-25 season, click here.