‘She has fine-tuned her skills to mature perfection’
The Independent.
Born in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Marston spent most of her childhood in Cambridge before joining the Royal Ballet Upper School in 1992 where she won the Ursula Moreton Choreographic Competition.
Upon graduation she joined the Zurich Ballet where she performed a mixed repertoire of work from Balanchine, Van Manen, Nijinsky and Wubbe. In 1996 she moved on to the Luzern Ballet under the direction of Richard Wherlock and later spent a year with the Bern Ballet, continuing to enjoy a range of works from Robert North, David Parsons, Stijn Celis and many others.
During her six years in Switzerland Marston continued to develop a relationship with the Royal Ballet, choreographing regularly for their Dance Bites tours and education department. Her ballets were performed at the Sadlers Wells Theatre, on tour in the UK and China.
In 2000 she returned to London to begin a new chapter of her career as freelance choreographer/dancer. In the following seven years she choreographed for the Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet Theatre, Northern Ballet Theatre, the Basel Ballet, Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, the Washington Ballet, George Piper Dances, The Ensemble Group, and many other companies. In 2002 she was made the first Associate Artist of The Royal Opera House. This relationship saw the ROH produce five evenings of Marston’s work in the Linbury Theatre including a full-length adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts as well as one act ballets such as before the tempest…after the storm, Asyla, Echo and Narcissus, Traces, Sophie, Stateless and Broken Fiction. One of these evenings was filmed by the BBC. Marston was also commissioned to create four short works for the screen by Channel Four, for which she work with director, Margaret Williams on You Cuba.
During this period Marston performed with Henri Oguike Dance Company, Arc Dance Company, Liv Lorent, and was The Blue Fairy in Will Tuckett’s Royal Opera House’s Production of Pinocchio. She was also movement director in Opera and Theatre productions including Bird of Night at the Royal Opera House, Don Giovanni at Grange Park Opera and Calico in the West End.
She was short listed for the Jerwood Choreographic Awards in 2000, the UK Critics Circles Awards in 2003/2004, the Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2004 and commissioned by The Place Prize in 2006.
At the end of her tenure as Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House, Marston formed her own company – The Cathy Marston Project. Funded by the Arts Council England, it toured the UK in Autumn 2006 with a triple bill of her work including the world premiere of Arcana – a collaboration with composer, Dave Maric and fashion designer, Bora Aksu.
Marston frequently collaborates with other artists. These have included composers - Dave Maric, Stuart MacRae, Judith Bingham, Roxanna Panufnik, Jules Maxwell, Peter Sculthorpe and Dylan Newcombe; designers – Jon Bausor, Jean-Marc Puissant, Anthony Lamble, Tatyana Van Walsum; film makers Peter Anderson, Charles Kriel, Margaret Williams and Terry Braun; Dramaturg – Edward Kemp and light designer - Simon Bennison.
In August 2007 Marston became the Director of the Bern:Ballet, Switzerland, where she creates her own work and curates the work of others. She will also continue to create new work elsewhere; the next project will be a new full-length adaptation of Dicken’s classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, commissioned by Northern Ballet Theatre with a commissioned, orchestral score by Dave Maric.
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