On 25 June 2019, Northern Ballet's new production Victoria, choreographed and directed by Cathy Marston and scored by Philip Feeney, will be screened in more than 300 UK cinemas, introduced on screen by Marston with a video featuring her with designer Steffen Aarfing during the 15-minute interval. It was filmed at Sadler’s Wells after it had premièred in March at Leeds Grand Theatre, and is currently on tour until 1 June.
John Travers, Head of Distribution for CinemaLive, said, “we are absolutely delighted to be working in partnership with Northern Ballet to distribute this exciting production to cinemas in June. Northern Ballet’s innovative, dramatic approach to storytelling looks beyond traditional ballet titles and we are proud to bring Cathy Marston’s brand new ballet to the big screen.”
David Nixon, Artistic Director of Northern Ballet, added, “as it’s not possible to reach everyone with our live tour of Victoria, I’m delighted that we will be able to offer this wonderful new production to cinema audiences throughout the country to enable even more people to access our productions. In addition to being a superb ballet production, Victoria presents a story of dramatic and historical importance. I think the cinema release will provide a superb opportunity to audiences who love ballet and I hope it will give ballet audiences and those who are new to ballet the chance to discover a new passion for our art form.”
Marston said of her production, “onstage, there are two stories: the story of Beatrice re-writing her mother’s life and the story of Victoria’s life. To film the ballet, we made careful decisions about which characters to focus on and when, especially as in the choreography I often play with counterpoint: multiple movement ideas happening at the same time. Sometimes it’s possible to capture everything in a wide shot, but often it’s a matter of choosing which part of the choreography to zoom in on. This means we had to make decisions on a specific reading of the ballet, which is both interesting and challenging."