The latest buzz production in a near-swaggering 2025 programme at Royal Ballet is Perspectives: Balanchine, Marston, Peck – an enervating triptych which the Standard loved and typical of the spirit of adventure happening down in Covent Garden. The piece by the aforementioned Marston – Cathy Marston – is a particular highlight, a new one-act ballet entitled Against the Tide which is set to Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto which was written just before the outbreak of World War 2.
Her last piece on the Main Stage at Royal Ballet & Opera, The Cellist, about Jacqueline du Pré was notable for its intense emotional heft, and this new one carries similar intensity but comes from a very different approach, more abstract that the ballets that have made her name.
“I think most people know me for narrative works,” Marston says on the line from Switzerland, where she is Director and Chief Choreographer of Ballet Zurich, “In the past few years since I created The Cellist for the Royal Ballet in 2020, I've been making big pieces with composers.
I created Of Mice and Men with Hollywood composer Thomas Newman and a version of Ian McEwan's Atonement with the British composer Laura Rossi, among others.
For this piece, I felt like having a change, and taking a piece of existing music, a proven brilliant score, and working with the gorgeous dancers of the Royal Ballet really letting that lead the way.”
Freed up from being tied to a book or a biography, where she comes up with a scenario and then and then works with the composer to create the music, she instead began by listening to Britten’s concerto and writing down the images that came to mind. But certainly the life of the composer and the era in which he lived was hugely important.
“Britten wrote it in between 1937 and 1939, just on the brink of war,” says Marston of the key details that aided her impressions, “He was a pacifist, and he’d moved to America, where it premiered. It was shortly after his mother had died. And he was also homosexual at a time when that was illegal still. So there was a certain context to writing it, but it's definitely not a biographical ballet in the same way that The Cellist was.”
As such, there is no story outlined in the programme but she says a narrative is right there in the music, “I think you do hear the war in the distance…in the very opening there's a low drum timpani drum, and I feel as if it's an acknowledgement of the onset of war. And because it's a violin concerto you really feel the piece is in the first person. It does sound like the violin is the protagonist and going on a journey, and at times it's very lyrical and sweeping and almost sings, and at other times it's rather jittery and nervous and uptight.
So I tried to make sense of the story I hear in the music.”
She stresses that Benjamin Britten himself never outlined a story behind the music, though there must have been meaning for him. But this only added to the pleasure of working on this piece for her, which she found, “rather liberating because I could feel free to let my dreams roam.”
She continues, “Some of my works are really narrative, this feels more of a poetic narrative. I'm really encouraging the audience to connect with the different characters that have emerged from the music and understand them in their own way.”
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The results are a piece featuring eight men and one woman – “it could be a mother figure, or a sister, or a lover” – who consoles the male protagonist, who is equated with the violin. It features a stunning set by Chloe Langford of a large rock face which is also a bridge, at the edge of the sea. The protagonist explores this liminal space as he goes on a journey encountering other characters, as he heads towards some self-discovery.
But nothing is prescribed, and the depth of work behind it is designed to encourage interpretation rather than convey a specific message: “It's deliberately made on many layers, so all of the interpretations are right.
What I'm trying to do is move people with beautiful dancing and music in a way that is stirring, is emotional, is human… It's not abstract, it's very human, but that doesn't mean it has to be a concrete narrative.”
As you’d imagine, part of the role of the choreographer is to work her ideas to fruition with the dancers themselves. She reveals that in the rehearsal space they will use concrete images to build movements from which can put across certain emotions.
“At one point the violin does these little pizzicatos or murmurs, and I felt it was critical at that point for the protagonist to be in conversation with the woman, in a place that felt like a safe space.
We’d imagine them cooking comfort food because when you go home to somewhere safe, you eat. I’m not expecting anyone to recognise she’s baking bread but those kind of nourishing images inform the choreography. They’re just ideas that help us to create intention that the dancers can then take into movement.”
Such intuitive artistry is part of what has taken Marston to the top, but there’s also the work ethic. The piece has been a long time in the making, partly because of her commitments with Ballet Zurich, and the way it works with Royal Ballet, where it’s a case of grabbing rehearsal hours within a hectic schedule. Very much worth it though, particularly since Marston went to the Royal Ballet School and was associate artist at the Royal Opera House.
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“I’ve been part of the Royal Ballet family for years, and yet when I was 18, my first professional job was Baller Zurich, so both places have a huge amount of history for me. The circles joined for this piece, which is a co-production between the two.”
This working set-up, along with the joys of living in the chocolate-box pretty Switzerland, means she says she’s continually “pinching myself… I’m super lucky.”
As our audiences in Covent Garden who make this run. And really, that is what drives Marston. Like any artist worth their salt, she believes in the transformational aspects of the work, its ability to communicate what words often can’t:
“I hope audiences will be moved or stirred, and emotionally engaged. One of the things that dance can do so well is encourage empathy. What it is to step into someone else's shoes and imagine what other people's lives might be or what emotional challenges they might face. is so important in these times.”
She says preaching is of no interest, polemics which dictate are far from the point.
“It’s never a question of the goodie and the baddie or the right ideal and the wrong. I'm never interested in stories that are black and white. I'm interested in tension, but not guilt and innocence.
There are various duets and group scenes which suggest certain relationships or societal norms. But I think it's a chance for people to engage with them in a way that's not fuelled by political words and rigid stances, but in a way that's portrayed in really fluid, sensitive human movements.
I hope that people don’t even think in words about that, but just feel those situations and those emotions and maybe that will be something they take out into their lives.”
Perspectives: Balancine, Marston, Peck is at Royal Ballet & Opera until 2 December
