Nestled in the Swiss plateau lies the mediaeval city of Bern. Legend has it that its illustrious founder, Duke Berthold V, returned from hunting one day and named the town after his first catch of the morning – a bear. Were Berthold to return to his city today, he might see in its cobbled streets and imposing clock towers much to remind him of earlier times; the River Aare still flows irrepressibly onward, the city’s lifeblood pumping through its heart. Yet sitting high up on its banks, at the cross-roads with the old corn-exchange, Berthold might also spot the newer Stadttheater (built in 1903) and were he to venture into its gilt interior he might be shocked to find signs of a British invasion, for it is here that Cathy Marston, lately Artistic Associate of the Royal Opera House and leader of her own troupe, has taken up the position of Artistic Director of the Bern Ballet.

I have admired Marston’s work over the last few years - she is the thinking man’s choreographer (I regard her as the Joan Bakewell of the ballet world) - and to those who are prepared to do their homework, to engage in a little prior research, she rewards works of fiercely intelligent response. Her Facing Viv for ENB was a heart-piercing exploration of the emotional vacuum surrounding T.S. and Mrs Eliot and Ghosts (a work I consider to be her masterpiece, due to be revived for Bern next April) was an extraordinary distillation of the Ibsen play. By her own admission she is most comfortable working with narrative (though her abstract Dividing Silence for NBT, belies that fact) and for Bern she has created a vision of The Firebird, using Stravinsky’s score, but rejecting Fokine’s scenario in favour of the fascinating and clear-told story centred around the mystical figure of Rasputin (whom she regards as a real-life Firebird) and his relations with the Imperial family.

Her reference might be the first two acts of Macmillan’s Anastasia, though uncluttered with unnecessary dramatic padding, and her response to it speaks in metaphorical, symbolic and ritualistic gesture: dance phrases begin at the centre of unwinding spirals, clusters of dancers seeming to unlock from central axes, unfurling outwards into clawing, keening movement that hovers on the edge of collapse, as the tale tells explicitly of Rasputin’s imminent murder and implicitly of the fall of the Romanov dynasty. She allows movement to speak emotionally for itself, her dancers, their faces blank, expressionless, appearing as phantoms that haunt the stage and as ever with Marston the music feeds its emotive drive and with splendid playing from the Bern Symphony Orchestra and in fine design from Jon Bausor it was, I thought, a marvellous account.

To open her premiere evening, Marston has invited Hans van Manen (in his 75th year) to re-stage Concertante his 1994 work to Frank Martin’s lusciously romantic “Petite Symphonie Concertante”. It finds van Manen at his most cleanly sculptural, cutting sharp, linear shapes through the air, layering their patterns as a minimalist tapestry and I found it a work of great artistry, danced superbly well. Doug Varone’s Of the Earth Far Below is an oddity - its frenetic pace, its slithering, crawling manner and its score by Steve Reich whose screeching strings seem to bewail some ghastly calamity just around the corner, are not to my tastes - though I understand it is right that companies must dance this stuff and it speaks of the brave and eclectic commissioning policy which Marston intends to bring to the company.

Of the company itself, there are (happily) the familiar faces we have come to expect from the best of Marston’s performances – Jenny Tattersall, Omar Gordan, Martina Langmann - but also new and fascinating talents – Ihsan Rustem, Hui-Chen Tsai, especially notable in a company stuffed with great dancers – whose progress it is the duty of everyone interested in contemporary ballet to watch over the coming seasons. It is a company full of artistic hope and from these exceptional ingredients I expect great things.

Dancers: Gordon, Langmann, Rustem, Tattersall, Tsai

Edited to alter two words in the third paragraph

Lovely review - I can't wait to see Cathy's interpretation of 'Firebird' - it sounds so right and so her. Any plans to tour it that you know of?

I think I can perhaps do without the Varone/Reich piece, though!

Have a good time out there - Orson Welles' Harry Lime will have to add Cathy to his very short list (just "coo-coo clocks") of what the Swiss are famous for, now!

All best

Graham

It's interesting that the Swiss press have been less forthcoming in their praise (though all the Brits over for the show considered it one of her best works): I am not sure that they are yet ready to "get" Cathy's specific brand of narrative dance (I think they are more comfortable with van Manen!) and it will be interesting to see how much she is able to teach them to watch her pieces over the years.

For those of you able to read German, here are some links to what the local critics thought:

Zurück zum Handlungballett
Berner Zeitung

Viele Visionen, Wenig Feuer
Der Bund

In Banne Rasputins
Neuer Zürcher Zeitung

Nur der Feuervogel ist nicht so frisch
Tages-Anzeiger

The first unexpected pleasure was a call from Cathy shortly after reaching our hotel, extending an invitation to company class the next morning. And so, passing frozen fountains and with every tree and bush sparkling and rimed with frost, we took the tram to the Stadt Theater's premises towards the outskirts of town. On alighting we had but moments to wait until, amidst a tinkling of cycle bells, there was Cathy, complete with heart-warming smile and, thanks to a last-minute hair dryer failure, nicely freezing curls! But things warmed up within minutes as we entered the Vidmar Hallen, a fairly recently acquired space in a warehouse complex that provides rehearsal and storage space for the Stadt Theater, including a studio and office space for the Ballet, and a 300-350 seat theatre, very similar in layout to the Clore Studio at the ROH.

All fourteen dancers had assembled for class, to be taken by Cathy's assistant and longstanding colleague, Jenny Tattersall, and after a brief introduction - "This is Janet, my first ballet teacher, and Ian" - the day began. Now, whilst Janet has done a company class or two in her day, this was a complete first for me and, for a layman, it became an endless fascination. For example, and probably naively, I had not anticipated the tangible increase in temperature in the studio as the dancers' workrate increased, with a roof vent being opened after about half an hour to cool things down. And I had somehow expected that everyone would rise, fall, turn and jump in perfect unison, just as on stage, but it was not like that at all. Progressively, it became clear to me that Cathy's company has truly been drawn from very different dance backgrounds, and that it was fatuous to expect them all to look the same in this warm-up workout session. Throughout, I had the impression that Jenny was setting a challenging class, and I know that Janet's expert eye would be noting all manner of technical points. Me? I was simply trying to absorb as much of the experience as possible, and I was sorry when it was all over. But happily, the treat was not at an end for, after a short break, the company went into rehearsal.

We were told that they had undergone a full rehearsal of that evening's triple bill the previous day, and so they were going to work on one of the scenes for "Ghosts", Cathy's notable full-length work from 2005. It will be premiered in Bern in April, and is the piece that largely confirmed the theatre director's view that he should offer Cathy the appointment as ballet director. This was another fascination. The work is not notated, and is being revived using the best memories of those company members who danced it in the UK some two years ago, together with video footage, whilst Cathy ensures that the mood and dramatic intention of the original is maintained. Moves were put together by the likely first cast, whilst a second group marked them, and these sections gradually cohered into a whole, finally run by both casts against Dave Maric's score. And during all of this, I was seated at the side, desperately searching my memory for the story, and delighting in finding that, with repetition, bits of the action would be remembered. With some three months to go, I think I may safely say that some powerful performances are in the making. But eventually, after four totally engaging hours, it was all over and time to head back into town, with the prospect of the evening ahead.

Here, I hardly know where to start ... so let me do so like this. Ian Palmer reported on the Opening Night, above, and as this was to be the tenth of twelve performances spread over some three months, I'd say that we saw a much more confident company, imbued with the experience of the previous nine shows and of two more months of working together. (And a word here too for the Bern Symphony Orchestra, which provided sterling support in all three works.) The house was perhaps two-thirds full, but those there were highly enthusiastic about all three works, and around a hundred of them were sufficiently interested in what they had seen to remain behind afterwards for a post-show discussion period with Cathy. I mention this as initial critical reaction in October was somewhat iffy, but there was no sign whatever of that being representative of general audience reaction last Saturday.

For my taste, the programme was nicely balanced, moving from the neo-classical, via full contemporary, to the narrative dance of Cathy's revised view of "Firebird". Hans van Manen's "Concertante", set to a score by Frank Martin, featured strongly marked choreography, allowing the dancers to establish individual identities on their entries, but then leading on to fluid and sympathetic dual and group movement reflecting the musical phrasing. This was very easy on the eye, and the company was clearly at home in this type of work as, indeed, seemed the case in Doug Varone's unremittingly contemporary "Of the Earth Far Below" which followed. Having seen Ian P's review, I had rather feared the worst here, but in the event found that neither Steve Reich's score nor the choreography was too off-putting. The dance here was less strongly marked than in the van Manen, with the groupings more frenetic and anomalous, suggestive perhaps of alienation. "Too much like life", one girl had said to Cathy at another post-show discussion, explaining why she had not cared for it. Perhaps so.

And so to "Feuervogel/Firebird," which turned out to be a triumph of narrative art. Since hearing that Cathy's version would be based around the interaction of Rasputin and the Romanov family, I had wondered how such a complete revision could be handled when Stravinsky's score was so firmly written with the Fokine fairy-tale version in mind. Now, having seen it, everything is there, clearly matched to the music, from a Prologue indicating disaster at the front for the Russian army (we are in 1915), Rasputin's being brought into the royal household, his effect on the Tsarina through his apparent curing of her son, the enmity that this engenders in the royal circle, leading to his eventual assassination. And the closing scene is, I submit, quite wonderful. Where many of us are used to the glorious Bakst backcloth and a wedding scene suggesting that the Tsarist dynasty will last forever, we see here instead a foretaste of the bloody end of that same dynasty some two years later. Days later I can still hardly get over just how well the standard story is turned. And yet Cathy does not abandon the fairy tale entirely - a red feather is as significant here as in the original. In sum, the narrative flow is clearer in this work than in any other of Cathy's that I have seen, and it is now my clear Marston favourite. There were no weak performances - if pressed, I'd have to mention Erick Guillard's Rasputin and Hui-Chen Tsai's Tsarina, but then I'd also want to put in a word for the four glorious princesses, the intriguing Prince Felix, and so on! How I wish this Firebird could be seen over here, and I feel sure that a triple bill such as this would do very well at Sadlers Wells. There are two further performances, on 18 and 31 January - go if you can, you will not be disappointed!

I fear that I may have rambled enough, but I have to finish on a word of praise for this small but wonderful company, many of whom had no prior experience in narrative dance. By this tenth performance, and on the evidence of their rehearsal for Ghosts, I'd be hard pressed to say which those were as they have coalesced into a cohesive group. Bern is a fortunate city to have them, and the discussion period after the show indicated that a number of its citizens know this. I trust that realisation will spread to the local critics before long.

And, albeit a little late, I've just been sent a link to a bit of local TV footage that preceded the run. It acts as a nice reminder now. If you have Quick Time installed, I think it will run OK; if not, there is a download button to the right side of the window.

http://www.art-tv.ch/1052-0-stadttheater-bern--tanz3.html

And hearking back to your "Thinking Man's Choreographer" description, when Cathy joined the company in class after a bit of office work, she was listening to something on an iPod whilst reading a volume of T S Eliot's poetry. I wonder what that might portend one day?