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Given the ephemeral nature of the art form, the history of ballet is mostly a history of great interpreters and of great interpretations. It is difficult, therefore, not to associate the titles of celebrated works with the names of equally celebrated artists. This is the case with Frederick Ashton's Ondine, created in 1958 to music by Hans Werner Henze. It is in the purest tradition of l9th-century Romantic theatre dance, of which the work's 1843 precedent, Jules Perrot's Ondine, was one of the most representative titles. Ashton conceived a narrative three-act work that could exploit the skills of the ballerina, and of one ballerina in particular, Margot Fonteyn. He drew on his good knowledge of the past repertoire as well as from his own idealised perception of ballet's bygone golden era. Ashton provided his muse with all sorts of theatrical and choreographic expedients. These included an updated version of Perrot's acclaimed `pas de l'ombre': a solo sequence in which the female protagonist, a water sprite, encounters her shadow for the first time and...