Clara

The internationally renowned choreographer Cathy Marston holds both British and Swiss citizenship. Since August 2023, she is the director of the Ballett Zürich. She received her dance training in Cambridge and at the Royal Ballet School in London. Between 1994 and 1999, she danced with Ballett Zürich, the Luzerner Theater Ballet, and Konzert Theater Bern. From 2002 to 2006, she was an Associate Artist at the Royal Opera House in London, and from 2007 to 2013, she served as ballet director at Konzert Theater Bern. Cathy Marston has been working as a highly successful freelance choreographer for many years and has been invited to work with numerous renowned international companies and institutions. She has created works, among others, for The Royal Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Ballet Black, the National Ballet of Cuba, as well as Opera Australia and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. In recent years, she has increasingly worked in the United States, with commissions for San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Houston Ballet, and Joffrey Ballet Chicago. In her choreographic works, she brings major literary classics to life through dance, and approaches significant historical figures in unexpected and original ways. She achieved great success with her ballet adaptations "Mrs. Robinson" (Charles Webb), "Snowblind" (Ethan Frome), "Jane Eyre" (Charlotte Brontë), and "Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck). Unconventional perspectives also shape her biographically inspired works "The Cellist", "Victoria", and "Witch-Hunt". Cathy Marston has received multiple awards for her choreographic work, including a South Bank Sky Arts Award and the British National Dance Award. In 2020, the International Institute for Dance and Theatre honored her with an award for excellence in international dance. The highlight of her first season as director of Ballett Zürich was the 2024 world premiere of "Atonement", based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan (a co-production with Joffrey Ballet). In addition, her pieces "The Cellist" and "Snowblind" were performed in Zurich. In the previous season, her Clara Schumann ballet "Clara" premiered. In 2026, she will choreograph "Romeo and Juliet" for Ballett Zürich.

Daniel Capps is in demand worldwide primarily as a ballet conductor. He studied at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London and continued his training under renowned mentors such as Colin Metters, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Charles Mackerras, Mark Wigglesworth, Péter Eötvös, and Thomas Adès. From 2003 onward he assisted Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, including for Berlioz’s "Les Troyens" at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. In 2008 he made his debut with the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and has since been a regular guest conductor there. Daniel Capps has been associated with the New York City Ballet since 2011, and in 2012 he was appointed Resident Conductor. Also in 2011 he made his debut with the National Ballet of Canada, where he conducted Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland". He has worked with orchestras such as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Danish Orchestra, the Brighton Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the New Japan Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, the Washington Opera Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France, as well as with the Monteverdi Choir. His artistic work has earned him distinctions including the Ernest Read Conducting Prize and the Fred Southhall Memorial Prize for Conducting. In recent seasons he made his debut with Ballet Zürich ("Walkways"), the Australian Ballet, and the Spanish Compañía Nacional de Danza, all of which have repeatedly invited him back. Tours have taken him to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Cuba, France, Spain, Mexico, Denmark, Australia, Colombia, and throughout the United States.

Philip Feeney studied composition with Robin Holloway and Hugh Wood at the University of Cambridge and with Franco Donatoni in Rome. He has written a large number of works for ballet and dance and has collaborated as a pianist with numerous ensembles, including the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Rambert, Acosta Danza, Adventures in Motion Pictures, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. As a composer he has worked with choreographers such as Christopher Gable, David Nixon, Michael Pink, Didy Veldman, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Derek Williams, Adam Cooper, Sara Matthews, and the hip-hop artist Jonzi D. His music has been performed by companies such as English National Ballet, Boston Ballet, Cullberg Ballet, Scottish Dance Theatre, Bern Ballett, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre. For the latter he wrote the scores for the critically acclaimed ballet "Giselle" (2003) and the award-winning "The Bull" (2005). Philip Feeney’s association with Northern Ballet in Leeds, England, spans more than 25 years. For this company he has written eight full-length scores, including Gable’s "Cinderella", Gable and Pink’s "Dracula" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", Veldman’s "A Streetcar Named Desire", Nixon’s "Hamlet" and "Cinderella", and Marston’s "Jane Eyre" and "Victoria". In 2020 he worked for the first time with American Ballet Theatre and arranged the music for the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s "Of Love and Rage", which was taken up by the Vienna State Ballet in autumn 2025.

The internationally renowned choreographer Cathy Marston holds both British and Swiss citizenship. Since August 2023, she is the director of the Ballett Zürich. She received her dance training in Cambridge and at the Royal Ballet School in London. Between 1994 and 1999, she danced with Ballett Zürich, the Luzerner Theater Ballet, and Konzert Theater Bern. From 2002 to 2006, she was an Associate Artist at the Royal Opera House in London, and from 2007 to 2013, she served as ballet director at Konzert Theater Bern. Cathy Marston has been working as a highly successful freelance choreographer for many years and has been invited to work with numerous renowned international companies and institutions. She has created works, among others, for The Royal Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Ballet Black, the National Ballet of Cuba, as well as Opera Australia and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. In recent years, she has increasingly worked in the United States, with commissions for San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Houston Ballet, and Joffrey Ballet Chicago. In her choreographic works, she brings major literary classics to life through dance, and approaches significant historical figures in unexpected and original ways. She achieved great success with her ballet adaptations "Mrs. Robinson" (Charles Webb), "Snowblind" (Ethan Frome), "Jane Eyre" (Charlotte Brontë), and "Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck). Unconventional perspectives also shape her biographically inspired works "The Cellist", "Victoria", and "Witch-Hunt". Cathy Marston has received multiple awards for her choreographic work, including a South Bank Sky Arts Award and the British National Dance Award. In 2020, the International Institute for Dance and Theatre honored her with an award for excellence in international dance. The highlight of her first season as director of Ballett Zürich was the 2024 world premiere of "Atonement", based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan (a co-production with Joffrey Ballet). In addition, her pieces "The Cellist" and "Snowblind" were performed in Zurich. In the previous season, her Clara Schumann ballet "Clara" premiered. In 2026, she will choreograph "Romeo and Juliet" for Ballett Zürich.

Edward Kemp, born in Oxford, has collaborated with Cathy Marston on more than twenty ballets, including seven for Bern Ballett. Recent collaborations include "Summer & Smoke" (Houston/American Ballet Theatre), "Of Mice and Men" (Joffrey), "Mrs. Robinson" (San Francisco), "The Cellist" (Royal Ballet), "The Suit" (Ballet Black), "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" (Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal), "Liaisons Dangereuses" (Royal Danish Ballet), and a screenplay for Disney+. He has written texts for composers such as Sally Beamish, Victoria Borisova Ollas, Jason Carr, Tansy Davies, Terry Davies, Péter Eötvös, Stuart MacRae, Julian Philips, and Gary Yershon. In theatre, his works include "King James Bible" (National Theatre), "The Mysteries" (Royal Shakespeare Company), as well as stage adaptations of Bulgakov’s "The Master and Margarita" (Chichester/Complicite/Avignon), Lessing’s "Nathan the Wise" (Chichester/Off-Broadway/Shaw Festival), and Faulkner’s "As I Lay Dying" (Baton Rouge). He also adapted works by Brecht, Goldoni, Kleist, Lorca, Prokofiev, Molière, Racine, and Sibelius for the stage and translated novels by Paul Auster, Eça de Queirós, Charles Dickens, Knut Hamsun, Ted Hughes, Salman Rushdie, and W. G. Sebald. He has written dramas and comedies for BBC Radio and directed plays and musicals in the United Kingdom and the United States, from authors such as Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare to Alan Bennett and Stephen Sondheim. From 2008 to 2021 he was Director and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Today he is Chief Executive of the Royal Literary Fund, the oldest literary charity in the United Kingdom.

The internationally active stage designer Hildegard Bechtler lives in London. Her work in opera and ballet includes productions for the Metropolitan Opera, the Santa Fe Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, the Sydney Opera House, the Opéra National de Paris, La Scala in Milan, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and the Amsterdam Muziektheater. These include the world premieres of Cathy Marston’s "The Cellist" for The Royal Ballet and Thomas Adès’s opera "The Exterminating Angel", which was performed at the Salzburg Festival, the Met, and the Royal Opera House. Further work includes "La damnation de Faust" at the Schiller Theater in Berlin – a revival of the award-winning ENO production – as well as "Dido and Aeneas" and "Acis and Galatea", choreographed and directed by Wayne McGregor, for the Royal Opera House and La Scala in Milan. For her design of "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" at the Sydney Opera House, she received the Australian Green Room Award. She has also worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic, the Donmar Warehouse, on Broadway, and in London’s West End. "Top Hat" (2012) and "Oresteia" (2016) were nominated for the Olivier Award. For the Royal National Theatre she designed "Antony and Cleopatra", "Hansard", "After the Dance" (Olivier Award), "Iphigenia at Aulis", and most recently "Dr. Strangelove". Together with director Robert Icke she created, among other works, "Hamlet", "The Doctor", and "Oedipus". In opera she most recently designed the sets for "La traviata" at the Glyndebourne Festival and, in summer 2025, for "Don Giovanni" at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

Bregje van Balen was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and trained as a dancer at the National Ballet Academy in Amsterdam. She was a member of Nederlands Dans Theater for eighteen years. Even during her active career as a dancer, she repeatedly worked as a costume designer, and after retiring from the stage she completed her studies at the Baruch Fashion Academy in Amsterdam. She has created costume designs for dance and theatre, including for Nederlands Dans Theater, the Norwegian National Ballet, the Gothenburg Ballet, Hamburg Ballett, Introdans, Aterballetto, the Győr Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, the Opéra de Lyon, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Staatstheater Mainz, Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, the dance company of St. Gallen, Bern Ballett, and the Nationaltheater Mannheim. She has worked with choreographers such as Patrick Delcroix, Jorma Elo, Medhi Walerski, Cathy Marston, Alexander Ekman, Johan Inger, and Jo Strømgren. At Zurich Opera House she most recently created the costumes for parts of the triple bills "Timekeepers" and "Countertime" as well as for "Atonement" and "Clara".

Martin Gebhardt was lighting designer and master electrician for John Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet. From 2002 onward he collaborated with Heinz Spoerli and Ballett Zürich. Ballet productions of both companies took him to renowned theatres across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. At Zurich Opera House he created the lighting design for productions by Jürgen Flimm, David Alden, Jan Philipp Gloger, Grischa Asagaroff, Matthias Hartmann, David Pountney, Moshe Leiser/Patrice Caurier, Damiano Michieletto, and Achim Freyer. At the Salzburg Festival he designed the lighting for "La bohème" and for a new version of Spoerli’s "Der Tod und das Mädchen". Since the 2012/13 season Martin Gebhardt has been Head of Lighting at Zurich Opera House. He maintains a close collaboration with choreographer Christian Spuck (including "Winterreise", "Nussknacker und Mausekönig", "Messa da Requiem", "Anna Karenina", "Woyzeck", "Der Sandmann", "Leonce und Lena", "Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern"). He has also worked as lighting designer for choreographers Edward Clug (including "Strings", "Le Sacre du printemps" and "Faust" in Zurich), Alexei Ratmansky, Wayne McGregor, Marco Goecke, and Douglas Lee. He collaborated with Christoph Marthaler and Anna Viebrock on Handel’s "Sale" and Rossini’s "Il viaggio a Reims" in Zurich as well as on "Lulu" at the Hamburg State Opera, and with Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito at the Grand Théâtre de Genève for "Les Huguenots". In 2023 he designed the lighting for Spuck’s ballet "Bovary" at Staatsballett Berlin and in 2024 for Rossini’s "Tancredi" at the Bregenz Festival. He was also the lighting designer for Cathy Marston’s "Atonement" at Zurich Opera House.

Edward Kemp, born in Oxford, has collaborated with Cathy Marston on more than twenty ballets, including seven for Bern Ballett. Recent collaborations include "Summer & Smoke" (Houston/American Ballet Theatre), "Of Mice and Men" (Joffrey), "Mrs. Robinson" (San Francisco), "The Cellist" (Royal Ballet), "The Suit" (Ballet Black), "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" (Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal), "Liaisons Dangereuses" (Royal Danish Ballet), and a screenplay for Disney+. He has written texts for composers such as Sally Beamish, Victoria Borisova Ollas, Jason Carr, Tansy Davies, Terry Davies, Péter Eötvös, Stuart MacRae, Julian Philips, and Gary Yershon. In theatre, his works include "King James Bible" (National Theatre), "The Mysteries" (Royal Shakespeare Company), as well as stage adaptations of Bulgakov’s "The Master and Margarita" (Chichester/Complicite/Avignon), Lessing’s "Nathan the Wise" (Chichester/Off-Broadway/Shaw Festival), and Faulkner’s "As I Lay Dying" (Baton Rouge). He also adapted works by Brecht, Goldoni, Kleist, Lorca, Prokofiev, Molière, Racine, and Sibelius for the stage and translated novels by Paul Auster, Eça de Queirós, Charles Dickens, Knut Hamsun, Ted Hughes, Salman Rushdie, and W. G. Sebald. He has written dramas and comedies for BBC Radio and directed plays and musicals in the United Kingdom and the United States, from authors such as Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare to Alan Bennett and Stephen Sondheim. From 2008 to 2021 he was Director and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Today he is Chief Executive of the Royal Literary Fund, the oldest literary charity in the United Kingdom.

Michael Küster is from Germany. After studying German studies, art, and speech science at the University of Halle, he worked as a presenter, author, and speaker at various broadcasting stations in Germany. There, he hosted numerous classical music programs and live broadcasts of major concert events, including those from the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Semperoper Dresden, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.
Since 2002, he has been a dramaturg at the Zurich Opera House, working with directors such as Matthias Hartmann, David Alden, Robert Carsen, Moshe Leiser/Patrice Caurier, Damiano Michieletto, David Pountney, Johannes Schaaf, and Graham Vick.
As dramaturg of Ballett Zürich, Michael Küster has collaborated since 2012 with Cathy Marston, Marco Goecke, Marcos Morau, Kim Brandstrup, Edward Clug, Alexei Ratmansky, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, and Hans van Manen. Together with Christian Spuck, he worked on productions including «Winterreise» («Prix Benois de la Danse»), «Romeo and Juliet», «Messa da Requiem», and «The Sleeping Beauty».
At La Scala in Milan, Michael Küster was dramaturg for Matthias Hartmann’s opera productions of «Der Freischütz», «Idomeneo», and «The Queen of Spades».