ToThePointe Meets Cathy Marston
When I interview choreographers, I often find myself getting a little nervous prior to speaking with them. Their intimidating creativity and artistic view of the world can lead to big egos and pretentious conversation; however, when I chat with Cathy Marston, with whom I speak for almost two hours, she is charismatically grounded. Every answer is professional and perfectly delivered, as if she knows what I’m going to ask way before I ask it. I suppose this is down to numerous interviews over her 25-year career, but I think it also gives an insight into her measured nature. There is no ego with Marston. Sure she knows what she wants but it’s the movement, not her, that does all of the talking. Her pieces don’t revolve around her and her beliefs, but rather, she is able to create choreography that is accessible for all, completely unpretentious and void of any egotistical narrative. I really like that, and she tells me as much when she says that when she choreographs a story she “gets a sense that there’s something more important than your voice.” Marston is someone I could speak to for days. We are quite similar, both having studied English and with a passion for literature; we also share a keen interest in movie musicals, and as a cellist myself, there’s a connection over Jacqueline Du Pre, but more of that later. She is clearly bright and studious and her organised approach to her work reminds me more of a diligent teacher than the stereotypical choreographer we often imagine. In a way, I suppose Marston is a teacher. Throughout her life she has curated her own path, starting as a dancer, then accepting a career-changing role as Director of Bern Ballet, which led to her current role as a successful freelance choreographer. She is also a mother, a wife, and friend to many in the arts world. So yes, there’s a lot we can learn from Cathy Marston.
Cathy Marston, photographed by Clare Park
I suppose we can’t really begin our interview before we discuss the dreaded topic of Coronavirus (am I starting to wish Brexit was a topic back on the cards...perhaps) and so I ask Marston how she is getting on in her home in Switzerland. “One of the nice things to come out of this is having more time to spend with my family. My life is pretty fragmented: I go away for a few weeks and then I come home for a few weeks, so I think it’s been good for us to have a few months as a family together.” I wonder what effect the pandemic has had on Marston’s upcoming works and she tells me “the projects that I was working on still look like they are going to happen so that’s good news, it gives me time to do a lot of research for them now.” Marston shares with me a sadness over the effect our current situation has had on the arts, but also demonstrates a positive attitude about it all. We don’t dwell on it, and I move on to ask her how she first got into dancing. “I started with tap, as many kids do. I really loved movie musicals so tap was really appealing to me and after a while of doing it my teacher suggested I do ballet.” Marston went to school in Cambridge, which she tells me was very creative. After appearing in performances of their version of The Snowman, Marston changed schools to focus more on ballet and study the RAD programme. “My parents were both teachers and felt very strongly that I should do normal schooling, so I went to a normal comprehensive, and attended The Royal Ballet School summer workshops pretty much every summer, which was a real highlight, I loved it.“ Marston tells me that her parents would allow her to join the Royal Ballet Upper School only if she attained GCSEs in English and Maths. She breezed through this easily and was fortunate to get into the school at 16. It was here that she began to choreograph, although she had already leant towards creative work at her comprehensive school which, unusually, had a dance department. “I’ve always been drawn to telling stories and watching stories. It felt very natural to me to choose choreography when I went to the RBS. It was really what got me through the school. The classes were about strict technique and there were few contemporary classes and so the choreography was a place of freedom for me.” It was at the RBS that she met her choreographic tutors, David Drew and Norman Morrice, who most of us know as ballet royalty. “They became like family to me, they were wonderful, I spent a lot of time hiding in their office upstairs. They would play LPs and talk to me about my pieces and it was a really special time. We had a great relationship.” Being so young, and having such important mentors, put Marston in good stead and perhaps encouraged her to break the mould of her fellow students at the school. “In the second year I did an inter rail around Europe which not many of the students did, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting into The Royal Ballet. I would have loved to have got in to Rambert but that didn’t happen either. When I got back to London, the Director of Zurich Ballet, by chance, came to one of the contemporary classes and I showed him a video of my choreography which also had me dancing in it. By luck he offered me a contract to join Zurich Ballet. I was incredibly lucky because that first job is incredibly hard to find.” Marston tells me that she already knew Zurich’s repertoire, unlike her classmates, and knew it would suit her. She praises the mixed rep and says it ranged from “Balanchine to Van Manen to Nijinsky.” It would be hard to imagine Marston, whose works we all know now, as a corps de ballet member in the Royal. Dancing such varied works in Zurich seems much more fitting. “It was a fantastic two years. The company was unusual and not what I was used to. There’s a definite style at The Royal Ballet, but at Zurich, at that time it was so mixed and there were so many interesting people coming from all over the world, from different backgrounds, and I loved it. I really grew up there and found it very informative.”
15 year old Cathy as a student at King Slocombe School of Dance, Cambridge
But alas, many good things come to an end, and after two years the Director was fired, along with his company members. “It’s pretty normal in Germanic countries that when the director changes, the dancers change too” Marston reassures me after my initial surprised reaction. It sounds brutal but not dissimilar to many organisations I know in the City. Luckily Marston had been following the career of Richard Wherlock, whose choreography she admired, and who was moving to Basel to direct their dance company. She auditioned for him and was offered a contract in the company, moving only an hour away from Zurich. She maintained a relationship with The Royal Ballet and was commissioned to make small pieces for their summer holiday workshop. She caught the attention of Anthony Dowell, who was the Director at the time, and began talks with him of returning to join the company. Unfortunately it was during these discussions that he resigned, and Marston’s desire to return to London was put to bed. “It was all taking time and I thought I need to just get on with my career so I accepted a contract I had been offered at Bern Ballet. It was a small company like Luzern with a mixed rep but they didn’t let me have any opportunity to choreograph and that was very frustrating for me. So after a year I resigned and moved back to the UK to focus on choreography.” It seems like fate that Marston never received a contract at The Royal Ballet. What if she had? Would she have achieved the same success over her creations? Would she have been given the freedom and encouragement to explore her talent? I think it would have made it all the more difficult, and I admire how she decided that she wasn’t going to wait around to see whether she may or may not get in. I also admire that at that time her craving for choreography was in full swing and upon learning Bern weren’t interested in this, she resigned. She soon became an Associate Choreographer of The Royal Opera House, making works for The Linbury, and began receiving commissions around the world which she loved. Just a couple of days after receiving her first arts council grant to start her own project-based company, she received a call asking her to take up the Directorship position at Bern Ballet. She accepted the offer and returned to Switzerland, the place that had helped to shape her career path.
As Director or Bern Ballet, photo by Philip Zinniker
“I really learnt on the job in Bern and I wanted to run the company so that it was a place that I would like to be in if I was a dancer or freelance choreographer working there. I wanted to create an atmosphere that felt safe for people to take risks, happy, positive, it really was like a family.” Marston’s time as Bern Ballet’s Director sounds like a dreamy one; however, she tells me that it became clear early on that they didn’t have the type of budget that larger companies were so used to which meant that bringing in the big works was an expensive mission which Marston says “didn’t seem justifiable.” In a way, I suppose this was a blessing as it would mean Marston could focus on choreographing her own pieces. “I knew I wanted to choreograph there but I also didn’t want it to only be my choreography. I had two studios and a really creative group of people and time, because we had three programmes a year and one choreographic workshop, so we had time to create.” Although it was at Bern that Marston was able to really explore her own choreographic style, she was also adamant that the company would be somewhere that the next generation of choreographers could feel welcome. “I felt we could be a company that could hopefully house the big choreographic names of tomorrow and I’m really proud to say that in the first year I commissioned Alexander Ekman before I think he had done anything outside NBT and I commissioned Hofesh Shechter to create his first piece for a company outside of his own, so I chose some good people.” I will insert here more gushing about how Marston is clearly removed from any ego-centric behaviour. She took on her position at Bern not just for the learning opportunity, but to really create a lasting legacy. She made sure that the company was somewhere budding choreographers could feel free and encouraged to create and she also worked hard on making sure that the audience numbers at every performance gradually increased, something that the company can thank her for today. “The tools I learnt at The Royal Opera House such as open rehearsals, communication and access were really useful. I introduced that to the company in Bern, and gradually the audience grew. There were regularly 75/80 people in our studios watching the rehearsals.” These open rehearsals still continue at Bern Ballet and have helped to spread awareness of the company and the performances that they offer. Her time at Bern wasn’t just a base for her to play around with choreography; she had a longer term vision for the place that became so close to her heart. “I’ve been in so many different situations over my 25 year career and I think it was a particularly special time because of the atmosphere that we managed to create together.” Unfortunately the politics of it all led to Marston’s departure, (her contract wasn’t renewed when the Intendant of the theatre changed), and after seven years in the position she began a new life as a touring freelance choreographer. “It was gutting at the time because of course you put so much of your heart and soul into it. I’d had my first baby during my final year so it was a scary time but as it turned out it’s been an absolute blessing and I’ve had a lot of work since I left. I’ve been able to travel and work with some amazing companies and that’s been wonderful.”
'Dangerous Liaisons' performed by Royal Danish Ballet, photo by Costin Radu
I wonder whether there is a hidden urge to direct a company again, or for Marston to develop her own company in the future. “I don’t really see myself building up my own company but after Covid who knows, life might change drastically. If you’d asked me that two months ago there would have been a very clear answer of ‘no I don’t see myself creating my own company.’ Do I want a Cathy Marston ensemble touring the world? Probably not, but would I want to direct another company again? Possibly.” Marston assures me though that if she did manage another company it wouldn’t be for a while. “Things started to go so well as a freelance choreographer and it became really clear to me that this was the time for me to do it and I was getting commissions that I’d been working 25 years to get. I’m loving the position I’m in now and it feels really creative. It’s nice to go to different places because you can just be you each time whereas if you’re choreographing in the same place you kind of have to take responsibility to balance the programme, and you have to keep shaking it up.” Well shake things up Marston has done, in her own way and on her own terms. For the past decade she has gradually built her name up, becoming one of the leading female choreographers in the industry. If you’re aware of her work, you will know that Marston, especially in recent years, has placed a lot of focus on interpreting famous literary stories that we all know and love into dance. Such works include Lolita, Dangerous Liaisons, Hamlet, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and of course Jane Eyre. I wonder why adapting stories such as these into dance has been so important for Marston. She tells me that whilst at Bern she had to really address her work, and it was only in the wake of her departure that she was finally able to reflect on her style and how she wanted to progress. “When I first arrived at Bern I did a version of The Firebird and it was reviewed terribly! It made me think about what was important and what I had never really considered before. I began to think about the narrative and the storytelling. Growing up watching the big ballets, you took it for granted that if you needed a table or a chair you could bring them on stage. But I found that I can be much more inventive and creative if I really limit those things and use what’s on stage as fully as possible and that’s what really came out of my choreographic style.” Those who know Marston’s works will know that she often uses her dancers to replicate or mimic props and sets, instead of bringing too many physical objects on stage. I know some who find this confusing as they aren’t always sure who is meant to be what. In The Cellist, for example, corps de ballet members pose as wardrobes and lamps, which I think may have taken a second viewing to understand; however, the cello itself was embodied by a dancer, rather than the physical object being carried around. “I did a workshop with Rambert as a student in Cambridge focusing on Christopher Bruce’s Swansong and that was really revelatory. I remember dancers showing us how the chair that’s in that ballet could be a comfort or it could be a weapon or the prisoner itself. Finding ways to tell stories that feel creative and make you understand stories, in ways that words don’t, has always been a driver for me.” Marston tells me that once she left Bern she realised that what had always inspired her were story ballets. “Stories have always inspired me and dance is somehow my language. It’s just always been like that. So when I’m choreographing, I’m trying to tell the story but also the meaning behind that story. Movement has always meant something to me and I can’t imagine it any other way.” For me, Marston is a choreographer who will be remembered for turning stories into dance, in the same way that screenwriters adapt books into films. There aren’t big pas de deux or group sections that stick out for me, but rather it’s the story being told in its entirety that I remember. Like the way we read a book, the way Marston depicts her beginning to her end, in all of her works, is what is most memorable. With so much subject matter to choose from, I wonder how she goes about deciding which novel to adapt or which historical story to tell. “Travel often influences me and when I’m travelling I often like to go to the local book shops. When I was in Leeds, for example, I was looking for a ballet that I would make the following year for San Francisco Ballet and there was a particular dancer that I knew I wanted to create for. I was looking across the shelves and then I saw a copy of The Graduate, which Charles Webb had written in San Francisco, and I knew it had great bones for ballet.” Marston’s most recent work, Mrs Robinson, was meant to premiere in March but unfortunately had to be postponed due to Coronavirus. “I have a list on my phone of works I would like to turn into ballet, but obviously you can’t just work down that list. Every commission comes with slightly different parameters, so I might go back to my bookshelves or the bookshop to feel inspired. Sometimes you dig around a bit for the context of the commission and you can find something that might resonate or inspire you. I think it’s important that I do works that I really connect to, or that I find my way into. It’s the passion and dialogues that inspire me.”
'Jane Eyre' performed by Northern Ballet, photo by Emma Kauldhar
Many of Marston’s works feature a strong female lead, and I ask if this is intentional but Marston tells me it’s just sort of the way it’s been. “I’m proud that it’s happened that way though and that dance is putting women centre stage and at the forefront.” Having a female lead has meant that Marston has depicted some of the most well-known literary and historical women, from Jane Eyre and Mrs Robinson to Queen Victoria and Jacqueline Du Pre. Does she feel a weight of responsibility in bringing them to life through dance? “I need to find my way into the story and when I do then it feels authentic and honest. With Victoria it was scary because she’s such a huge real life figure, but after my time in Bern I learnt to be braver and realised you can do what you want as long as it’s done right with integrity and proper research.” I think she must be brave to choose some of these heroines as they must come with some die hard fans. Take Jane Eyre, for example… Bronte’s classic has been studied by so many of us at school and graces the shelves of most family bookcases. “I like to take big stories that people know and love and interpret them. I enjoy the dialogue with the audience, I do all of this research and it’s nice to have it resonate with people who really know those stories.” Personally, I think she does a great job in providing her audience with a respectful and honest portrayal of each character whom she immortalises. I tell her that I loved the way she portrayed Queen Victoria and the dualism between Victoria the Queen and Victoria the young girl. “It involved a huge amount of reading and it was really challenging to find the right way in because it’s essentially a hundred years of world history. I was aware that there was so much sensitivity around her but I had to find the angle which would be right for my ballet. Telling her story through the eyes of her youngest daughter was the story that I wanted to tell and maybe it’s because the mother-daughter element was compelling to me.” Marston is a mother of two, and I’m curious as to whether this has influenced her work at all. “I think the themes seem to resonate more. I don’t think it was entirely a coincidence that shortly after having my second child, my son, I made a version of Hamlet in Germany. I approached the whole thing from Gertrude’s voice and give her a different take. I wanted to look at her more closely and look at Hamlet through her eyes. It felt more personal somehow once I’d had my son. Mrs Robinson and her relationship with Elaine feels quite personal too.” The themes of motherhood and femininity are clear in much of Marston’s work and although it pains me to join the list of journalists asking what her views are on the lack of female choreographers, I can’t help myself. “I feel passionately that there should be a wide representation of voices in theatre, dance and ballet. For many years there was clearly an enormous inequality between men and women in terms of the choreographer and leadership in dance or ballet in particular. It makes no sense to me that people argue there weren’t talented women around. So I think it’s really important that it has become a prominent issue over the last few years and people have started addressing why that was the case, or why it still is the case to some extent. Actions have been taken in the last few years and you begin to see a difference and that feels great.” I tell Marston that I think she is someone to whom many younger female choreographers will be looking up. It goes back to what I said at the beginning: this is someone who many of us can look up to and learn from and I have no doubt that she will influence a whole range of women in the arts.
'Victoria' performed by Northern Ballet, photo by Emma Kauldhar
It’s the angle of the story that she turns into dance that gets Marston excited when creating new work. “At school I read Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard and it enlightened me to know I could tell a story from a different angle and approach and I’ve kind of been trying that ever since.” I find this interesting, and it goes back to Marston’s idea of abandoning big sets and props. Finding the right way into a story seems to be the initial focus when starting her creative process on a work. How was she led there when choosing to depict Jacqueline Du Pre’s life and the relationship with her husband and her cello? “There are a lot of other ballets that could be made about Jacqui’s life, but for me it was very clear that it was going to be centered on her relationship with music and her muse. It’s a story of love and loss but I’d made so many ballets about relationships between people. As people we have this enormous capacity for love and it’s not always directed to somebody else but sometimes it can be redirected for a place, or an art form or an object. So I wanted to tell the story of that love and how that relationship impacts on someone, because it seemed to me to be quite compelling.” The ménage a trois that Marston places at the centre of the ballet is unlike anything I’ve seen before in the sense that it shows a woman torn between her love for a man but also for her talent, both of which she is forced to abandon in some respect as she gets sick. It’s the type of story that seems so obvious to tell through dance, especially when you think of how physical Du Pre was when performing with her cello in comparison to the movement that would be taken away from her when diagnosed with MS. Marston tells me that it was thanks to her sister, a teacher, for giving her the idea when she found an old battered cello at the back of a classroom which caught the attention of the school children. Marston’s mum also suffers from MS and she tells me “that probably had something to do” with choosing the subject matter. Years earlier, when Marston was choreographing Dangerous Liaisons for Royal Danish Ballet, in an effort not to use a prop, she used a dancer as a cello on stage. It was a short moment in the ballet but one she wanted to explore again, which we see her so successfully master in The Cellist. The ballet received mostly rave reviews, with many critics citing Marston’s decision to use Principal dancer Marcelino Sambe as the cello a revelation. “Casting for The Cello and Daniel Barenboim (Jacqui’s husband) were not clear. Kevin O’Hare gave me a week about a year before to play around with anyone who was available and I had wanted to work with Matthew Ball but it was really hard because I had this visual idea of Barenboim as being short and fiery. But when Matt and Lauren were working together it just seemed to be the right thing and so I let go of that visual image! I had been trying Marcelino for that part because he seemed to fit the visual but then I felt he seemed so much more appropriate for The Cello. Marci is amazing, he was outstanding and really went with it.” I wonder how Marston came to the conclusion that Lauren Cuthbertson should play Jacqui. I use the term ‘play’ loosely as she seemed to embody Du Pre completely. “Lauren and I were communicating about it for about a year and I knew that I wanted to make it for her. When she was seventeen she had just joined the company and at that time I was making a ballet for the Clore studio, inspired by The Go Between. Gillian Revie should have been the main part but she got injured a week before. I’d had my eye on Lauren, she’s got this beautiful natural way, and I had said to her why don’t you come in and watch what we’re doing and learn some of Gillian’s material, but then the week before I told her ‘right I need you to do it’, and she was amazing. It was really fantastic and we’ve had this connection ever since. Her commitment to The Cellist throughout was absolute and that made our process together really uniquely special.” Marston tells me that since she was 16 she had wanted to create a ballet for the main stage at the Royal Opera House and that the premiere of The Cellist was the highlight of her career: “I was pretty proud that night.” I wonder, once a work has made its debut on stage, how hard is it to let go? Is there an emptiness once it’s all over and does it take a while for the characters to leave her psyche? “I miss the rehearsals more than the characters and the story itself, especially if we have got on well and had a laugh, but you’re so knackered by the end! I put everything into it to get it to the stage and by that point you feel exhausted. I only stayed for one performance of The Cellist because I wanted to leave it there at that moment. There’s nothing more you can do to it.” I ask Marston if she gets cravings to make tweaks and edits but she tells me she tries her best not to. “You’ve got to let it go and give it to the dancers. If it’s performed again, you get to make edits if you want to.” Once it’s all over, the reviews come rolling in and I’m curious as to how diligently Marston reads them, if she reads them at all. “I do read the reviews, but I’m trying to figure that one out. The only critic I deliberately avoided was The New York Times review of Jane Eyre, which I still have never read and apparently it’s absolutely hideous! I was told by a couple of trusted friends at the time not to look at it! Sometimes I think I shouldn’t read them but then I do and sometimes you learn things from them. But you never know which one you’re going to learn from so it’s really hard. I would love to know more from my colleagues actually on how they deal with the critics, maybe I need to wait a bit longer before I read them because you’re very vulnerable in that first week after a premiere.” As with all arts, the responses are subjective and Marston’s works don’t always appeal to everyone but this isn’t something that bothers her. “I make stories and they’re romantic and emotional and for some people that’s not their thing and they want more abstract works or more steps, different people want different things. I think sometimes you get critics who can put their personal feelings aside and create an objective and respectful review and often I have learnt from reading people’s thoughts on my works, but sometimes they can be spitefully written and that feels incredibly mean.” Although she may have received negative press at times in the past, Marston has a strong following, with many audience members and critics falling head over heels for each piece that she creates. I ask her more about her audience and fan base and who she hopes they are, and Marston tells me that she would like to be making pieces that make people feel richer after viewing them. She is also keen to attract a theatre-going audience and tells me “that cross pollination of theatre goers to dance is really exciting especially if it’s happening because of my work.” Marston’s style makes dance accessible for all types of audience members and I think that’s why so many of us are intrigued by her work.
'The Cellist' performed by The Royal Ballet, photo by Bill Cooper
Something that always amazes me about choreographers is their ability to get back on the horse after spending so much time and effort on a piece. Once it’s all over, it must be so challenging to start the process all over again but Marston simply tells me that she keeps herself organised, allowing some space for downtime before she starts work on her next venture. Starting work again could mean a commission from anywhere in the world. Does Marston enjoy the travelling? “I absolutely love it, it’s what I’m yearning for right now and I really miss it. It’s a complete and utter privilege. Of course at times you get home sick and it’s not easy but on the whole I really enjoy meeting new people, meeting new dancers, coming back to them and working with them again. I love it.” As a freelance choreographer, without having a permanent base anywhere, it must take a certain set of skills to alter her approach when working with such a vast range of companies. Marston tells me that she goes in with the same planning process no matter which company she is working with. In fact, the main differences between each company is the time that they can give to her. “When I worked with Northern Ballet and Ballet Black, they were able to really spend time with me and I had priority as they say. Bigger companies, like The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, are different. They are doing so many things at the same time and the dancers come in for an hour, change shoes from one piece, then have to go and rehearse another. It’s very difficult to get their concentration in the way that you really need it so you just have to adapt.” I praise Marston for working with such varied companies. To see the success that The Suit received, which she created for Ballet Black, was something she wasn’t expecting and tells me that it’s going to be performed in Germany whenever things get back to normal. She is also working with Atlanta Ballet, and I tell her that her name and works must be giving slightly smaller companies more press and attention. “It’s lovely if I can do that”, she tells me. The pull to work with larger companies is still present though and Marston states that creating The Cellist hasn’t stopped her from wanting more. She is also keen to stage bigger works and tells me “I would love to do more full length work, I love that big canvas and that long amount of time, it’s pretty hard to make short pieces and I really love having sole charge of an evening!” For now though, she must, like the rest of us, be patient as the world slowly goes back to normal. Her next big project is adapting Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck for Joffrey Ballet, a story that she says she has always wanted to develop through dance.
'The Suit' performed by Ballet Black, photo by Bill Cooper
As our conversation draws to a close, I look at the time and can’t believe we have spoken for so long. I could have continued talking with Marston because she’s just a pleasure to listen to. She’s intelligent, educated and doesn’t need to be prompted much to talk. I like her, and I’m interested to see what she does next and how she will juggle it all. It’s always tough for women to ‘balance it all’, as we are so often put into boxes of either mum, worker, or working mum, the latter of which is sometimes judged in society. Has Marston found a way to achieve this golden mean? “In the wake of my time in Bern I did a leadership course for a year which was amazing. I started that year trying to make the triangle of ‘me’ work. ‘Cathy: The Choreographer’, Cathy: The Director’ and Cathy: The Mother and Wife.’ I finished the year realising that I don’t need to be all of those things at the same time. I’ve felt that during this period, I’ve been mum, and I haven’t been worried that people will forget me if I don’t put something out there. You don’t have to be everything that you are all at once and at the same time, and I think that was a really important lesson for me to learn. It may be at some stage that I won’t feel like choreographing and maybe there will come a time when I take a step back and dedicate more of my experience and energy to leading an organisation again. But right now I’m really enjoying the creative possibilities that are inside of me.” And with that, Marston hangs up the phone and returns to her role as mum. For now…
Two of Cathy Marston's works will be available to stream from 29th May. Please find the links below and enjoy!
The Royal Opera House / Royal Ballet will stream The Cellist from 19.00 BST on the 29th May until the 11th June 2020, on:
San Francisco Ballet will stream Snowblind from 14.30 PDT (GMT-7) on the 29th May - 5th June 2020 on:
Twitter / Instagram : cathyrmarston
*Interview copyright Julia Dixon
*With thanks to Cathy Marston
*All images photographers own