Choreographer has a way with ‘words'

Otago Daily Times

14-05-2025

Storytelling ballets may not have been fashionable when Cathy Marston first began choreographing them, but they are becoming so now. She talks to Rebecca Fox about one of those pieces, one-act ballet My Brilliant Career , being performed by the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
Cathy Marston's love of a good story has never waned whether diving into a good book or putting on a ballet.
So when the British ballet dancer began choreography she was determined "not to be put in a box" and discovered she really loved telling stories.
"Maybe I never grew up from being a 3-year-old that asks why to everything."
While not fashionable at the time, it is becoming more popular as people recognise that it is actually a human quality to love telling stories, she says.
"Things make sense when we put them into a narrative."
However, it is not a easy thing to do in a ballet where there are no words.
"It's a challenge. But I've been practising and I love it. So most of my pieces are narrative."
While Marston, speaking from Zurich, Switzerland, where she is director of Ballet Zurich, says she appreciates abstract art in other forms, when it comes to ballet she needs to know what the purpose and focus of it is.
"In dance, it's not abstract because we're working with human beings. So you put two people in a room and it already starts to tell a story. So I'm interested in the specificity of it. Some choreographers enjoy leaving their works a little bit more open. And letting the audience make their own story through what they're seeing. But I really enjoy not just making a pas de deux about love, but love between two. What are the personality traits that we can articulate in our bodies? And what does that do when you add them together?"
As a result, she mixes ballet with more contemporary movement and by bringing more contemporary movement and partnering techniques in, the woman has more agency.
"So I'm really interested in, yes, a man can lift a woman overhead and that can be great. Both beautiful and it can tell something. But it's also interesting when the woman can take the man's weight or when they counterbalance. And it tells the audience different things about those people."
Her one-act ballet My Brilliant Career is a good example of this. The ballet is based on the novel by Miles Franklin — familiar to many through the 1979 film starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill — which Marston discovered in a vineyard bookstore while visiting her Australian husband's family.
"I was working through this bookstore. I mean, not reading every book, but I love browsing in real life rather than on the internet, if I can. And I came across My Brilliant Career . And really, what drew me in straight away was the character of Sybilla. She's just so much fun. And strong and mad a little bit. And silly and romantic, but ambitious. All of the different things that I guess I can identify with, too."
In the same visit she met the director of the Queensland Ballet who was keen to get her to create a work for the company that had an Australia base.
My Brilliant Career lent itself to ballet as there was nothing that could not be conveyed through dance, she says.
"It was sort of about ambition and love and dilemma and being sort of an inner dialogue."
The ballet was created in 2023 with the Queensland company including Cuban-Australian dancer Victor Estevez who performed Harry Beecham and has come out to New Zealand as a guest dancer to reprise the role in the Royal New Zealand Ballet's production of the ballet which is part of a double bill with Firebird .
Estevez says it was one of the most fulfilling and different experiences he has had.
"The way Cathy works and tells a story is very different to the way I'm used to. It was a very interesting and creative process. The role has grown on me, he's a real gentleman. It's wonderful to be here and having an input with the company and dancers," Estevez says.
It was a production Marston loved creating and a big part of that was due to the character of Sybilla.
"I think it was just the different relationships made us laugh a lot in rehearsals. And that's always good because you make your best things when you're having fun. I think it's a story that people can identify with," she says.
Marston could put herself in Sybilla's shoes.
"Yet, honestly, if it were me in that position, I would make the choice that she made as well. I'm not sure I would have slapped him over the face. But that was another one of those moments where he proposes to her, and she wants it, and then suddenly there's something that erupts in her, and she just whacks him. And it's just such a brilliant moment."
To help convey the inner dialogue of the story she created two Sybillas — one called Syb and other called Bylla.
"Here's this one side of her that we call Syb, who wants to be elegant and loved and admired and have fancy cakes with her tea and have a beautiful life. And that Syb could imagine staying, marrying Harry, having money, not worrying about life so much. And then the other side of her, who we nicknamed Bylla, is more of the ambitious tomboy type that doesn't want anyone to tell her what to do, let alone a man. And so they argue with each other quite a lot of the time. And so I decided to really visualise this by making it two dancers."
This means there are a lot of scenes where one Sybilla is more active and the other one is like a voice in her head and sometimes they swap places rapidly.
"So there's games that you can play choreographically once you've got the two of them. And I love trios. Choreographers love pas de deux, duets, and I love that too. But there's something about a trio that pushes it a little bit further. So you have three bodies to play with. It's hard to do. It takes longer to choreograph. But there's more tension in a triangle somehow. And so that's a theme that really goes throughout the piece, is this trio of Syb and Bylla and whoever they're dancing with."
Marston's work is all about detail and intention so she has assistance in developing with dramaturg Edward Kemp (former director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) and stager Jenny Tattersall. As she is not able to be in New Zealand for the RNZB production the pair are here.
"So I try to avoid traditional ballet mime. And one of the things that I often do, for example, is if someone is going to shake someone's hand, I'll try to say, well, instead of just shaking someone's hand, could we try connecting in the leg? So if the leg can somehow say what the hand would normally say, it looks more choreographic. But if it's done with the same intention, you understand the storytelling aspects of it. So intention of every movement really counts in my ballet. And so it's great that he [Kemp] can be over there in New Zealand working with the dancers on that."
That is especially important having two Sybillas.
"Everybody needs to be really clear on who are they talking to and who is just a figment of their imagination. So that's one of his tasks right now."
Other fiction-inspired works Marston has created are Snowblind (inspired by Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome ), Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre , DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men .
She won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for best dance production for Victoria (Northern Ballet), the UK National Dance Award for The Cellist (The Royal Ballet), The Suit (Ballet Black) and has been short-listed for both the Olivier awards and national dance awards for several other works including Jane Eyre and Victoria . In 2020 the International Institute for Dance and Theatre awarded her their prize for excellence in international dance.
Marston is used to juggling multiple commitments. Along with My Brilliant Career being produced in New Zealand, Ballet Zurich has just premiered a triple bill, including her own piece based on the film and book The Graduate , called Mrs Robinson , and two commissioned pieces including a world premiere.
She is also about to start development of a new work for the Royal Ballet, musically inspired by the Benjamin Britten violin concerto, that will premiere in November and is also preparing Romeo and Juliet for Zurich Ballet.
"So there's always different creative projects, like different plates spinning. And then there's the managerial thing of being a ballet director, which is actually a job in itself. So I am very busy. And I have two kids and a husband, so life is never boring."
Marston is able to do it thanks to a hands-on husband who is incredibly supportive of her career. Her children are now 9 and 12 so becoming more independent.
"So somehow we manage. And I think it's very difficult because you can't be more than one person. You can't be in two places at the same time. But you just have to follow your instinct and heart. And the kids are very understanding. That's what they know about me. This is who I am. And I hope it means that they'll also find their passions and know that they can follow that, too."
Following her passions is something Marston has always done. After watching a television show featuring a female police inspector she wanted to be her, but then her mother told her that was an actress, so then she wanted to be an actress. Unable to find a drama class, she started tap dancing which soon moved into ballet.
There are even some tap moves in My Brilliant Career although not explicit.
"I like using some tap steps because it just breaks up the ballet vocabulary sometimes and adds something a little bit more rhythmical and slightly folkloric."
She went to the Royal Ballet School aged 16 and her first job was with the Zurich Ballet.
"And that's the strange thing now and wonderful thing is that I've done the full circle and I'm now back in Zurich as the director of the company, which is kind of crazy. I never would have imagined that happening."
Marston went on to dance with various companies before going back to the United Kingdom where she became an associate artist at the Royal Opera House.
"I started choreographing fairly early and loved it. So it was really for my early 20s a priority. And I danced until I was about 31 and then I got offered the job to direct the Bern Ballet in Switzerland."
The small team was a great chance for her to develop her work and then after six years she went freelance, working for some of the best ballet companies in the world.
"So my ballet started becoming bigger and I just started getting really into story pieces. Honestly, I think storytelling is the thing that drew me in."
She remembers her parents, both English teachers, taking her sister and her to the theatre, especially Shakespeare productions, where she could not understand the words but loved the drama and intensity of it.
"Almost the words were like music. So I feel like that makes sense to me still, that music and dance together can tell the story. And I've always just been drawn to the physical aspect of storytelling rather than the words, although the words are what almost always provide the seeds for me in terms of the books that inspire me. So it's a funny mix."
Her busy schedule means she does not get much time to read, although she always has a book in her bag just in case.
"Its reassuring to have it there."
However, she is about to get a five-week summer holiday, so she is working on her reading list for that.
"It's one of those very special things in life, isn't it? Just to be able to disappear into a book." TO SEE:
The Firebird and My Brilliant Career , Royal New Zealand Ballet, Civic Theatre, Invercargill May 21 and The Regent, Dunedin May 24-25.
• To read about The Firebird, which did not make it to stage in Dunedin due to Covid-19, visit www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/dance/'firebird'-gives-role-wings