About Ballet Central

Trained at the Royal Ballet Schools, entering The Royal Ballet in 1975 and becoming a Principal dancer in 1984, Ashley Page worked closely with Frederick Ashton and Kenneth McMillan, creating numerous roles in new ballets by them and other leading choreographers of that period. As a choreographer since 1984, he has created many works for The Royal Ballet and other companies and developed a reputation for often daring collaborations with designers and composers. His ballet Fearful Symmetries won both an Olivier Award and Time Out Dance Award in 1994/95.

After 27 years at Covent Garden, he became Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet in 2002, re-energising and redeveloping them into an internationally renowned modern ballet company over a 10-year period, winning numerous awards and attracting critical acclaim and new audiences.

Since 2012 he has been freelancing as a choreographer and opera director, working with many ballet, contemporary dance and opera companies in the UK and internationally.

In 2022, Ashley Page created his original work Twice Removed on Ballet Central.

Cathy Marston is a choreographer, Artistic Director and Clore Cultural Leadership Fellow and is Director Designate of Ballett Zurich, Switzerland. After education in Cambridge, she spent two years at the Royal Ballet School, before launching an international career now spanning over twenty-five years, most recently choreographing for companies like The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, ABT, Joffrey Ballet, Danish Royal Ballet, Ballet Black, and Northern Ballet.
Cathy’s great gift is to join artistic dots, creating movement and form to communicate stories, emotions and ideas. As Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House for five years (2002-2007), during her six-year tenure directing the Bern Ballet in Switzerland (2007-2013) as well as founding The Cathy Marston Project (UK) and Companie La Ronde (Switzerland) she has developed an artistic signature that fuses British and European theatrical approaches as well as classical and contemporary dance techniques. She lends new perspectives to old narratives, for example in literary works like Jane Eyre, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Snowblind and Dangerous Liaisons or in biographically-inspired The Cellist and Witch-hunt. Widely recognised for her skill in telling stories through movement, she won the UK National Dance Award for The Suit (Ballet Black) and The Cellist (The Royal Ballet) as well as the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Dance for Victoria (Northern Ballet) in 2020, when she was also given the ‘Excellence in International Dance Award’ by the International Institute for Dance and Theatre.

For the 2022 tour, Cathy Marston’s 2020 piece Moving, Still was restaged by Jenny Tattersall.

Matthew Bourne is firmly established as the UK’s most popular and successful choreographer and director. He is the creator of the world’s longest-running ballet production, a record-breaking nine-time Olivier Award winner, and the only British director to have won the Tony Award for both Best Choreographer and Best Director of a Musical.

Matthew started his dance training at the comparatively late age of 22 and danced professionally for 14 years, creating many roles in his own work. As artistic director of his first company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, from 1987 until 2002, Matthew created many award-winning works. Further hit productions were created when New Adventures was launched in 2002, becoming the UK’s busiest and most successful dance company and the major exporter of British dance across the world. Matthew is also a West End and Broadway choreographer; a 25-year relationship with producer Cameron Mackintosh has resulted in the globally successful musicals Mary Poppins (which is currently enjoying a West End revival), My Fair Lady and Oliver! He has seven honorary doctorates and in 2018 received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from University of Oxford. He is also a companion of Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and a proud patron of many organisations, including Tring Park School of the Performing Arts, Arts Educational Schools London and Laine Theatre Arts.

First presented by Ballet Central on the 2017 tour, Highland Fling was once again performed on the 2021 tour with the kind permission of New Adventures.

A leading force in British dance theatre for twenty years, Jasmin Vardimon has built a reputation for challenging, exciting and visually stunning dance and continues to add to the body of critically acclaimed, artistically respected yet accessible work, both for the company she formed in 1998 and for some of the leading arts institutions she works with across the world.

Born and raised on a Kibbutz in central Israel, she was a member of the Kibbutz Dance Company and in 1995 was awarded the prestigious British Council ‘On the Way to London’ Choreography Award. In the late nineties she created Jasmin Vardimon Company (previously Zbang) and became an Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells in 2006.

In 2013, Jasmin took the role of Guest Artistic Director of the National Youth Dance Company, whom she continues to support through her company educational programmes for both current NYDC dancers and its alumni. It was for this company Jasmin created (in between) which was performed by Ballet Central in 2019.