Dance Data Project® (DDP) is proud to present Global Conversations – The Creative Process, an ongoing online series of interviews that feature some of the most notable choreographers, artistic and executive directors, dance critics, and senior academics working in ballet today. Global Conversations offers a holistic examination of the current state and potential future of classically derived dance as both an art form and a business.

Our first interview in the series is with Cathy Marston, an award-winning English choreographer (and artistic director) whose 25-year career features work that is heavily inspired by literature and uses narration to explore emotion in dance. Her love of literature comes from her parents, who were both English teachers, and can be seen in her works that have been inspired by authors, such as Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Charlotte Brontë. Cathy’s work marries the classical and contemporary, like when she formed a collaboration between dance, singing, and beatboxing.

After her school years in Cambridge, Cathy attended the Royal Ballet Upper School from 2002-2007. After serving as Associate Artist at the Royal Opera House, she directed Bern Ballet in Switzerland until 2013 and was named a Clore Cultural Leadership Fellow from 2013-2014. Cathy runs her own charitable company, The Cathy Marston Project, which launched in 2006 and helps support her work.

The Royal Ballet and San Francisco Ballet are streaming Marston’s work for free Friday – 29th May. The Royal Ballet will stream her most recent ballet, The Cellist, which was originally filmed for cinema, for two weeks. San Francisco Ballet will put her 2018 work, Snowblind, online for 1 week.