Ballett Zürich: Cathy Marston's The Cellist brings love and despair

A change of artistic direction for Ballett Zürich takes place this August. In a friendly nod to incoming director, Cathy Marston, outgoing director Christian Spuck invited her to mount her critically acclaimed ballet, The Cellist, created for The Royal Ballet in 2020. The one-act ballet celebrates the extraordinarily gifted cellist, Jacqueline du Pré, who found an almost mystic union with her cello. It’s a story of love and unique talent followed by loss and despair with the tragic onset of multiple sclerosis.

For Marston this is something of a home coming. Her first professional dance contract was with Ballett Zürich, then under direction of Bernd Bienert, while her later choreographic and directing experience was also nurtured in Switzerland. Marston is a choreographer who excels in narrative ballets but seldom in a literal sense. Rather she extracts elements of the story and explores them on a more abstract level. In The Cellist, it is the instrument that fulfils this role. The cello, that most embraceable of instruments, is a dance role, here played by Wei Chen with heart-breaking intensity.

Dance, like music, can articulate what we struggle to put into words. It can touch that raw spot of emotional vulnerability bypassing intellect and logic. Giulia Tonelli, in the eponymous role, finds this rawness, embodying the passions and talent that made du Pré so loved and fêted.

Choosing Jacqueline du Pré as her subject was a brave choice for Cathy Marston. In some ways she seemed an ideal subject: a life turbo-charged with love, both for her music and in her passionate relationship with Daniel Barenboim. Esteban Berlanga captures the charismatic arrogance of the brilliant young conductor, but their passion is short lived as multiple sclerosis claims du Pré. Dealing with the effects of this debilitating illness bring choreographic challenges as do the simple day to day routines of life.

Leaping the hurdles, Marston has created a ballet that has moments of radiance and physical beauty in choreography never explored before. The chemistry is fired in the trio as du Pré plays her cello under Barenboim’s baton. Tonelli’s embrace with Berlanga surges like an electric current, and melded in the movement there is Chen, an embodiment of the music that links them. It’s a moment of poetry. The joy in this relationship only serves to heighten the cruelty of the final duet between Tonelli and Chen. As Tonelli loses the ability to embrace her beloved cello, her despair turns to anger as she pushes Chen away. Like a faithful pet losing his master, he is unable to comprehend her actions and the hurt he experiences is palpable.

Each of the three protagonists displays recognisable style motifs: Chen, one arm raised like the neck of the cello, the other tucked behind his back, du Pré with legs splayed astride the instrument and Barenboim, his hands conducting the musicians. These distinguish the characters but also bring their own limitations to the choreography. However, the reversal of the traditional partnering stance in pas de deux: woman in front and man behind to lift and support, offers novel and surprising moments as Tonelli sits behind Chen, her body melding into her cello.

The corps play a variety of parts. They create the ambience, dancing with the vinyl disks while the young Oceana Zimmermann, a student from the Zürich Dance Academy, in a crystalline performance as the young Jackie, handles her first music record with unabashed glee. The corps also interpret the playing of the orchestra with different groups corresponding to different sounds. The ‘musical friends’, Mlindi Kulashe, Mark Geilings and Anthony Tette get some of the most exciting dance, while the cello tutors create strong characters each trying to mould du Pré to their style, a move she firmly resists.

More prosaic are the students sitting at desks, members of the audience and the slightly awkward family scenes of tea and pleasantries. Mélanie Borel as Jackie’s mother has the most developed character. Initially the pushy mother, she later finds depth of drama as the one who most intimately deals with her daughter’s illness.

A minimalist design of curve structures from Hildegard Bechtler and Bregje van Balen’s intelligent costuming, set the scene. Phillip Feeney’s effective score seamlessly references seven of du Pré’s favourite composers. Paul Connelly, one of the most experienced of ballet conductors, led the Philharmonia Zürich, enhanced by an impressive performance from cellist Lev Sivkov.

Maggie's accommodation was sponsored by Zürich Ballet and Opera