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Photograph by Clare Park
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Anybody who saw the Royal Ballet Dance Bites tours (reviews link) will probably remember Cathy Marston's work - its invention and freshness particularly.
While other choreographers perhaps waxed and waned Cathy always seemed to deliver a goodie for Dance Bites.
Having danced and choreographed in Europe for much of the 1990's she returned home this summer (2000) and, charming woman that she is, agreed to write a diary for us with hardly any arm twisting whatsoever!
This is the first diary in the series.
Second diary
Marston diary index
Cohabitants Link - just one of Cathy's projects
15 November
How does a soap opera begin? I can't remember ever having seen the first episode of one, but now that Bruce has asked me to write a diary for Ballet.co it would be really useful to know how scriptwriters introduce characters and events - it's not like they can start at the beginning of everything. Having said that, I've actually made a new start career-wise quite recently, but in order that you understand any of the things that are going on now, I think I should first explain a bit about my background and what I've been doing over the last few years. Here goes...
The early years
I grew up in Cambridge and at sixteen left home to study at the Royal Ballet Upper School for two years. Having been involved in a creation of Chris Hampson (your other diarist) while on a previous summer school, I was inspired to start choreographing myself as soon as possible. Encouraged by the choreographic teachers, Norman Morrice and David Drew, I made several short works at the school; collaborating with composers and designers and winning the Ursula Moreton Choreographic Competition.
Zurich Ballet
In 1992 I graduated and left England a week later to join the Zurich Ballet, then under the direction of Bernt Bienert. Looking back, I realise that I was very lucky to win such a contract. The company at that time had a fantastic, mixed repertoire of choreographies by Hans Van Manen, Mats Ek, Balanchine, Nijinsky and many others. Similarly the dancers came from a wealth of backgrounds - soloists from NYCB, the Scala and Bejart were mixed with youngsters like me from all over the world. It was so different from the Royal Ballet Company where the majority had all trained in the same place. I really didn't know what had hit me and spent an amazing two years learning from all these wonderful people around me in what is a surprisingly groovy city.
Unfortunately, at the end of these two years Bienert's contract as Director was not renewed and Heinz Spoerli returned to his home country from Dusseldorf to 'take over' the Zurich Opera House. He brought a much more classical repertoire and company of highly trained and superbly formed classical dancers. The majority of us were fired - not a rare occurrence in Europe. Most of us were happy to leave and going on to better things - Ballet Frankfurt, NDT, Nacho Duato among others. I decided that I wanted to move in a slightly more contemporary direction and perhaps try out a smaller company. A couple of my friends in Zurich had previously danced in a German ballet company directed by an Englishman named Richard Wherlock. They had showed me videos of his work and raved about his style of leadership, encouraging me to audition. By chance, at this time, he had also been offered the ballet company in Luzern, Switzerland; a mere fifty-minute train ride from Zurich. I went to audition, got the job and found myself surrounded by the beautiful countryside of Switzerland for another three years.
Luzern Ballet
The Luzern Ballet was a company of fourteen, mostly performing works by Richard Wherlock although we also had a few pieces from Ed Wubbe of Scapino Ballet and from Orjan Anderson - a very talented Swede. Richard has an amazingly dry, English humour, which often comes across in his ballets but also made rehearsing with him a pleasure. I learned a lot about directing rehearsals from him and hope that I have brought some of that back with me. Richard was also a very sympathetic man to work for and as I got offered opportunities to come back to England every year to choreograph for the Royal Ballet's Dance Bites Tour he gave me as much time as he possibly could, trusting my own discipline and 'quickness' to catch up.
Working with the Royal Ballet
Perhaps I should explain here that during the time I spent dancing in Switzerland I kept up quite a strong connection with the UK and the Royal Ballet in particular. I was invited to create short pieces for the Royal Ballet Education Department before Anthony Dowell invited me to create a ballet for the RB's 1997 Dance Bites Tour. 'Figure in Progress' was the result; I think it was considered fairly promising as I was offered Dance Bites Commissions for the next two years. I was most fortunate in the calibre of dancers that I was able to work with for these creations; the most notable, perhaps, being Deborah Bull and Jonathon Cope. To be given the opportunity to choreograph on dancers of such quality and experience at the age of twenty is no small matter and something that happens extremely rarely in other European Ballet Companies. I am still very grateful for this and consider the attitude of the Royal Ballet towards nurturing young choreographers through their early, experimental stages one of the institution's strongest attributes.
Nearly home....
In summer, 1999, Richard Wherlock moved to Berlin to become Ballet Director at the Komische Opera House and what was hoped to have become the Berlin Ballet. I understand that the plans for the Berlin Ballet have still not been fully realised and Richard has now been lured back to Switzerland to a great situation as Ballet Director in Basel starting next season. Anyway, I decided that it was time for me to work with some other choreographers so started looking around again. I was getting rather homesick for London already and progressively frustrated by not being able to choreograph as much as I should have liked. I was tempted to stay in Switzerland, however, for one more year when I was offered a contract with the Bern Ballet.
It was another moment of directorial change in Bern; The previous director, Martin Schapfer, was moving to Mainz in Germany and one of his dancers, Felix Dumeril, had been appointed to take his place as director of the Bern Ballet. This was quite a big deal for Felix - he was only twenty-eight and I don't think had really planned this to happen quite so soon. I knew him a little as Switzerland is a small country and we were both dancers there! He was full of wonderful ideas for his company; he wanted the Bern Stadttheater to be a creative place where many different choreographers would be invited to create as well as him. Indeed, in the first year we worked with eleven choreographers; for fourteen dancers that's quite a few! The dancers he gathered together were also very creative; I was one of more than five emerging choreographers in the company but we all had a lot of input in rehearsals. We worked very hard that year to build a good reputation and have a good atmosphere at work; I felt rewarded in that I learned an awful lot from the choreographers who visited - people like Robert North, Stajn Celis, Pierre Wyss, and David Parsons. However, we were extremely busy - not only performing in the ballet evenings but also an opera and a musical (yes - I've sung Aspects of Love in German!) There was no chance for me to choreograph my own work there, let alone come back over to London to create. At one point, I just realised that it was time to go home. Of course it was scary - until then I'd always had a pay cheque at the end of the month not to mention someone telling me what I had to do all the time! I knew though, that I'd enjoy organising my own time, and decided that I was prepared to do another job - waitressing or whatever - if I completely ran out of funds.
Return to UK and what now
I moved back to London in July and immediately started work with Bruce Sansom and Jenny Tattersall, making a duet for them to perform in a gala headed by Deborah Bull and Adam Cooper at the Exeter Festival. I returned to Zurich for two weeks to participate in a course for professional choreographers which is held there every summer and since that ended I've been here ever since! Finally I'm settled into a house in Clapham and so far have not had to do anything other than dancing or choreographing to earn money so I think I'm doing pretty well! Actually I fell rather on my feet with several commissions to be getting on with and I also landed a part time but on-going dancing contract with the a contemporary company of six dancers - the Henri Oguike Dance Company. I've already created a piece that is yet to be premiered for the National Youth Dance Company and am working on commissions for Images of Dance, the London Children's Ballet, Dance East Ballet Scholars and will present an evening with Tom Sapsford and dancers of the Royal Ballet in the Clore Studio Theatre in February.
There's a lot going on right now - mostly auditions for the London Children's Ballet, rehearsing with the RBC and next week I'll start work with Henri again for a month making a new piece to Piazzolla. I won't go into all of that now though - I think that's enough for one episode! If you're interested check out the column next month!
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