Alastair Marriott

Choreographic method is a highly individual process. It is well known that Marius Petipa would walk into the rehearsal studio with every step worked out in his head, then in his tiny vocabulary of broken Russian, indicate the direction of an enchaînement in relation to his own position in the room. Frederick Ashton, conversely, absorbed every phrase of his chosen music by a continuous process of listening over many weeks or months, arriving at the studio knowing the structure of the ballet he was about to create but without a single step prepared.

He would then employ his considerable craft in placing dancers into position, physically manipulating them like a sculptor working with clay.

Although we have these, and other, important historic examples of creative rubrics, the available models of choreographic method are virtually limitless. What really matters, however, is how the method shapes the final dance work. Alastair Marriott created a big splash with his first major commission, “Being and Having Been,” created for the Royal Ballet’s Inspired by Diaghilev season in 2004, and was immediately nominated for a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Best Choreography. What drove ...