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Cathy Marston
'Tempest and James Joyce...' | |||||||
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She has been writing for Ballet.co since 2000 and still finds time to dance as well, currently with ARC.
Link to previous column.
Link to later column It's New Years Day, just after lunch and I feel fine! I really didn't want a hangover this morning and luckily I've got away with it! Actually, I deliberately saw the New Year in with a small group of friends and kept celebrations quite low key. I'm in the middle of an intensive creation period and my mind is far too involved in all that either to want or organise any major partying! Since the last time I wrote – November I think – I've done my dancing for the year! I spent just over a month with Arc Dance Company doing research and development for Kim Brandstrup's new Hans Christian Anderson project, which will premiere, and tour, next autumn... It feels like a long time away – and indeed there was initially a spring premiere planned, but for various reasons it seemed better to postpone; so, we spent some weeks just playing with material and finally had an informal showing in the Clore Studio to give sponsors and friends a taster of what's to come. It was nice to work with Kim again. Quite a few of the dancers were new to the company and I was pleased that my experience of Hamlet with Arc last year meant that I was more familiar with the way Kim creates and that I could help the new ones out a bit. By chance – or maybe by taste, I will be creating on some of them later in the year too, so it was good to see how they work without me as the person in charge just yet! A day after I finished with Kim, however, I became that person as I started choreographing my 'Tempest' evening for the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House. In a similar way to last year when I made work inspired by William Styron's Sophie's Choice to co-incide with a new main-stage opera based on the same story, I am now reacting to The Tempest in the Linbury while Thomas Ades premieres his new opera of it upstairs. Actually, I'm avoiding The Tempest itself and am shaping a prequel and a sequel to it. It'll be a sort of Tempest diptych; the music is a commission by Jules Maxwell and the first part will be a duet for Caliban and his mother, Sycorax, who never actually appears in the play but is discussed and generally perceived to be the antithesis of Prospero. It is said that Shakespeare based Sycorax on Ovid's Medea and so in the music we are using text from the Medea sections of Ovid's Metamorphosis – which is echoed in one of Prospero's major speeches of the play. The second part of the diptych is a duet for Prospero and Ariel, after the play concludes and as Prospero packs his bags to return to Milan whilst setting Ariel free. The text used in the music here is taken from WH Auden's The Sea and The Mirror, which is a beautiful and very long poetical commentary on Shakespeare's play. I realise this sounds very complicated but I think it will be a rather beautiful juxtaposition of the themes of birth/death, nature/dream, earth/air. The second ballet of the evening will be more an abstract dance (as much as my work is ever abstract!) to another piece of music by Thomas Ades – Asyla. This will be a quintet and should be quite a thrilling, energised work. Jon Bausor will design the evening with lighting by Simon Bennison. The dancers are all wonderful freelancers including Jenny Tattersal (ex-RB), Martina Langmann (ex Chomleys), Joh Williams (ex Dutch National and Scottish Ballet), Gildas Diquero (ex Hamburg, Luzern, Geneva Ballet companies), Dylan Elmore (ex Gulbenkian and Batsheva Dance Companies) and Matthew Hart (ex RB and Rambert). Tickets are on sale already at the box office and online for performances on the 6th, 7th and 8th Feb. There are also pre- and post-performance talks on various days and it would be lovely to see you there. After The Tempest, I go straight into work on my first West End play. It's one of those surprises that make life wonderful when a stranger whose work you know and respect rings you out of the blue to invite you to work with him. Well – in this case, he rang my agent but still! It's a new play called Calico by Michael Hastings who wrote Tom and Viv. He had heard about Facing Viv, which I made for English National Ballet, came to see it and loved it. Now, his new play is based on James Joyce and his family, including his schizophrenic daughter Lucia who had a rather special relationship with Samuel Becket while he was her father's assistant. Right up my street. It won't involve a lot of dance but there is a scene where Lucia, who studies 'free dance' in Paris, 1928, performs a short solo for her virtually blind father. It's a touching scene and Ed Hall, who is directing, feels that it could be a rather magical moment. I'm really looking forward to working on it – partly because I love the play, partly because the people I will be collaborating with are fantastic, and partly because I love theatre. This will be the first time I shall have worked in it, however, and I can't wait to be involved from the inside! Anyway, Calico will start previews at the Duke of York on the 21st Feb so look out for it!
I think that's quite enough for now, so all that remains is to wish you a very Happy New Year!
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