Cathy Marston 'West Side (Austrian) Story'
	Photograph by Clare Park Cathy Marston website ARC reviews 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 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.     Link to later column Marston diary index I think this is going to be the last diary I write until next September…. At the end of May I’m off to Austria for two and a half months to dance in West Side Story at the Bregenz Festival! This might sound a rather random thing to do but the connection is that my old director, Richard Wherlock, who is now director of the Basel Ballet, is choreographing it. It’ll be a bit of a reunion as lots of old colleagues will be there and I’m actually going over with Tom Sapsford (yes – we will be co-habiting once again but this time with a terrace overlooking Lake Constance!!). The show will be performed on a stage ‘on the lake’ and I gather has a cast of thousands (well almost) so if anyone’s travelling in the area between the 18th July and the 18th August, I recommend booking tickets now! I’m really excited to go – it’ll be a change and to be honest I’m rather glad of the break…Of course it’ll be hard work but I’m going to take a suitcase of books and can’t wait to settle down in the Austrian mountains to do some good quiet thinking! That’s why I’m not taking my laptop. I’ve decided to rely on Internet cafes and ration myself on my mobile – so if you don’t hear much from me please don’t take offence! I’m even going to have a holiday at the end of it – Italy I think – which is quite an event as I haven’t taken more than four days off in the three years I’ve been back in London! So that’s what’s coming up… apart from that though, there are lots going on as usual… I’m coming to the end of Arc Dance Company’s tour of Hamlet. Apart from two shows this week in Scotland we’re done. I think it’s gone rather well… last week we were in the QEH in London and of course I had lots of friends in. I don’t normally get nervous but the pressure of all those ‘important’ people did put me rather on edge. I think the general response was good though: people keep asking me what I think of the piece and to be perfectly honest I can’t say. It’s a very close-knit kind of an organism (yes I know that sounds really weird and pretentious!) What I mean is that we are all moving in and around each other all the time and I think that’s what make the choreography rather than the individual ‘steps’…. so it’s really hard to tell how it works from the outside. I think it tells the story quite clearly though - without resorting to ‘ballet-type mime’, which is a plus in my opinion. I really enjoy the acting side of it – surprisingly I haven’t danced in a huge amount of narrative work and I love it – especially the bits when I can pretend I’m in a Jane Campion movie in a huge period frock!! This month I’ve got two choreographies to rehearse; the first is a short piece I’ve made for English National Ballet to perform in Westminster Abbey (further details). It’s part of the Abbey’s Mixtures series, which is a programme of organ concerts mixed with various other art forms. This one will be a concert by Dame Gillian Weir with dances performed by ENB – choreography by Tom Sapsford, Sara Matthews and me. It’s on the 13th May and I do recommend booking to get good seats – it’s in the round and should be a beautiful experience I think. I’m also creating a ballet for the Second Years of the Royal Ballet Upper School for their school performance. It’s to Prokofiev’s A Summer’s Day, which is a lovely, fresh, orchestral piece and will have a cast of four couples wearing ‘fifties-ish’ style costumes designed by Johannes Stepanek of the RB. It’ll be my ROH main stage debut which is quite exciting and will involve me chasing back from Austria for a couple of days to see the show go on. So that’s it for now please come and see ENB and the RBS – either on the main stage or in the Linbury….and have a great summer!!
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