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Cathy Marston
'Calm & pleasant summer...' | |||||||
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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 last summer (2000) and, charming woman that she is, agreed to write a diary for us with hardly any arm twisting whatsoever!
Link to previous column.
Marston diary index Today is the first day of September…that means the year starts again – I still can’t think in calendar years although it’s soon ten years since I left school! As it’s a beautiful day and could well be the last sunny Sunday I can enjoy for some time, I’m not going to write in quite so much detail as usual! I’m beginning to get a nervous feeling in my stomach: for the last couple of months I’ve had a comparatively stress-free time – not exactly holiday but nor the madness I’m used to. Now things start hotting up again…but before I talk about the coming months I’ll quickly summarize what’s been going on. I’ve adjudicated a number of test classes/competitions at various vocational schools as well as having taught at my old ballet school – King Slocombe – in Cambridge. I’ve choreographed a solo for a Russian ballerina, Natalia Shelokova, who wanted to try contemporary and have a solo to prove that she’s not just a ‘Russian Ballerina’. I went to visit friends in Vienna, was a tourist in Budapest, spent two weeks at The Place in their Choreodrome Festival researching a duet with Tom Sapsford which we plan to co-choreograph and dance, and am currently dancing in Turendot at the ROH. Although this all sounds like quite a busy summer, it was really quite calm and pleasant. Now the real work begins, as I’m about to start choreographing my first full evening of work that will be performed at the Linbury Studio Theatre in January. It’s an evening I’ve been asked to make for the ROH taking as my starting point William Styron’s novel, Sophie’s Choice. Anyone who has read the ROH’s next season’s guide thoroughly will realise that there’s also a new opera premiering at Christmas which take the same story as its base. Although the dance evening and opera are not directly connected, I think the point is that people may go to one and then try out the other – perhaps creating new audiences. Anyway, it could be quite interesting to see the similarities and differences. As it will be my preoccupation for the next few months, I won’t talk about my plans now but will relate them as they start to develop next month. Apart from this, I will be joining Kim Brandstrup’s Arc Dance Company in November. Actually, I forgot to say that I spent a research week with him during the summer in Newcastle with two other dancers. It was wonderful; Kim is a really warm and inspiring person and as his work is all about telling narrative through contemporary dance, I hope to learn a lot from him that will relate to my own choreography. I’m also happy to be dancing again… I’ve not been performing a lot since I left the Henri Oguike Dance Company last December to make my piece for ENB. Although I’m glad to secure choreographic opportunities like that and they are definitely the priority, I realized I still want to dance and learn from other choreographers, and that I should not linger in doing so!
So that’s what’s coming up….it’s all for now ‘cause I’m gonna seek the last of the sun!
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