Cathy Marston was the subject of the latest LBC’s ‘In Conversation’. Educated in Cambridge, trained at the Royal Ballet School, Cathy is now Director and Chief Choreographer of Zurich Ballet, a post which she commenced at the start of the 2023-24 season. Famed across the world, she has now made some 30 ballets for around a dozen ballet companies. Her first work for the main stage at the Royal Opera House was The Cellist, a ballet based on the life and work of Jacqueline du Pré. A ballet in which Cathy shows us, most successfully, the complex emotions of the situation as much as the story itself.
She talked about her approach to a new project, which will often be based on a strong narrative theme. By reading extensively about and around her subject she tries to find a new angle. For instance, Victoria, commissioned by David Nixon for Northern Ballet, while being about the Queen herself, features the important relationship with her daughter Princess Beatrice, and the fact that both women were widowed.
Another new work is Clara, a ballet based on the life of Clara Schuman, now in repertoire with Ballet Zurich. She uses seven dancers to represent the elements of Clara’s life at different times – child protégé, artist, wife, mother, manager, nurse, and muse – all important, and all expressed in their own separate ways. And then these seven dancers can sometimes represent the keys of the piano which is of course central to Clara’s story, an approach somewhat analogous to the cello in The Cellist.
All in all, a fascinating insight into the mind of one of today’s best-known and loved choreographers.
