New York Times: A Ballet ‘Jane Eyre’? Reader, She Dances With Him

By Roslyn Sulcas

4 June 2019

“You feel trapped, like the walls are closing in,” said the ballet mistress, demonstrating a sequence of frantic, elbow-jutting arms. “Keep the legs low, it’s not about the height, it’s about wanting to get out of here.”

Devon Teuscher, Misty Copeland and Isabella Boylston, the American Ballet Theater principals who are all cast in the title role in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre,” opening at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday, listened intently as they copied the movements and tried to absorb the intentions behind them. It was February, and an early rehearsal for the full-length ballet, based on Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel.

With its first-person narrative and intense focus on an interior consciousness, Brontë’s novel isn’t an obvious candidate for a ballet. But Ms. Marston, 43, a British choreographer who has slowly forged a reputation for her ability to create narrative works, seems undaunted by the challenges of transmuting literary complexity into dance.

It was the strength and unpredictability of Jane’s character that attracted her, she said, adding that she was often drawn to strong women as protagonists, including Mrs. Alving in Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” Cathy in “Wuthering Heights” and Queen Victoria — all characters around whom she has created ballets.

Read the full article in The New York Times.