Abstract
With ballets by Cathy Marston and Marco Goecke, the Ballett Zurich pays tribute to two shining artistic stars of the 20th century: Jacqueline du Pré and Vaslav Nijinsky. Using the artists’ biographies as models, both pieces trace the essence of creative work.
Cathy Marston’s ballet The Cellist was created for the Royal Ballet in London, and follows the life story of English cellist Jacqueline du Pré. For a fleeting moment, her star lit up the musical sky, before it inexplicably went out. Today, du Pré’s musicality, her genuine naturalness, and her presence are the stuff of legend. She had her first cello lessons at the age of four, revealing herself to be a «Wunderkind» and played her way to the top in the 1960s. She was exceptional, not only as an instrumentalist, but as a woman. She encroached upon masculine spaces, and consistently followed her own path. When she met the young conductor Daniel Barenboim, her bliss seemed complete. The two gave concerts across the globe, but a multiple sclerosis diagnosis ended du Pré’s career, and she died in London in 1987. Her playing continues to inspire generations of cellists today.
Cathy Marston places Jacqueline du Pré’s nearly symbiotic relationship with her instrument at the center of her ballet. In intimate, desperate, existential pas de deux, she gives the cello the contours of a dancer, baring the creative soul of this exceptional artist. In his ballet music, Philip Feeney arranged compositions from the cellist's repertoire, including works by Edward Elgar, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
