Scottish Ballet
By Judith Mackrell for The Guardian


When Ashley Page agreed to take on the ailing Scottish Ballet, he insisted that he wouldn't be running just another minor ballet troupe. Certainly, Edinburgh's first glimpse of its revamped national company showed it had changed out of recognition. Page's determination to present world-class choreography means that he has drawn his repertory equally from ballet and modern dance. His determination to sell that vision means that he has insisted on dancers who are capable of performing at extremes of the stylistic range. Even those who might not share Page's taste in choreography must acknowledge that he has hired a fabulously talented company.

The single factor uniting the programme is a highly evolved sense of form. In Richard Alston's Dangerous Liasons (1985), the choreography seems to be patterned around the intricate internal wiring of Simon Water's electronic score.

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Pressure tells as comeback ballet falters
By THOM DIBDIN for The Evening News (Edinburgh)

SCOTTISH Ballet returned to the stage last night with a programme of vibrant choreography that failed to live up to its promise.

It has been a long time since anyone saw anything of Scottish Ballet. In the interim, dancers have been sacked and the whole company given a complete makeover by new artistic director Ashley Page, who declared this new tour their make or break.

It was a dreadful thing to do to his dancers. The pressure on them to succeed last night showed from the word go.

In choreographic terms, Dangerous Liaisons by Richard Alston was exactly the sort of signal Page needed to make.

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Scottish Ballet
By Kelly Apter for The Scotsman

IT WAS one of those nights when the audience banter was almost as interesting as the show itself. After a year behind closed doors, few people knew what to expect from the revamped Scottish Ballet. Had the new artistic director, Ashley Page, implemented the proposed change of direction, moving the company over to a more modern agenda? Would the hotly tipped new recruits (over half the original dancers have been replaced) come up with the goods under the extreme pressure of a relaunch? The answer to both is a resounding yes.

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Review from The Times.

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Scottish Ballet Festival Theatre
By Clement Crisp for The Financial Times


The name's the same, but nothing else. Scottish Ballet has been re-launched and, I suppose, re-thought. The company that Peter Darrell created and so splendidly led for two decades fell on increasingly hard times after his death in 1987. Darrell had given it an identity which combined national and international ideals, and used Scottish musicians and painters and brought Scottish themes to the stage.

All this, if Thursday night's first programme under Ashley Page's direction is anything to go by, is in abeyance. The ensemble looks strong, but the repertory, to judge by the four works on offer, is fashionable rather than national. There is nothing wrong indeed, there is everything right - with Richard Alston's Dangerous Liaisons and Siobhan Davies's White Man Sleeps.

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Scottish Ballet, Tramway, Glasgow
By MARY BRENNAN for The Herald

LAST night, at the Tramway, Scottish Ballet got up close and personal with its audience. Those of us who sat in the front row were scarcely a yard away from honed and toned bodies going for gold in the "extreme" choreographic stakes.

But even as you were made aware of the effort involved in swift shifts of partnering – especially when the women are on pointe, with normal balances being skewed at almost every turn.

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Scottish Ballet
By Debra Craine for The Times


IF ASHLEY PAGE wanted to wake up his audience, this is certainly the way to do it. He has opened his inaugural season as artistic director of Scottish Ballet with a mixed bill that presents a practically unrecognisable company.

Since leaving the Royal Ballet a year ago, Page has been hard at work in Glasgow getting his Scottish troupe ready for this seismic shift. He’s hired so many dancers that almost half the company is new; he’s brought in guest teachers to coach them in a variety of styles; and he’s started the long process of changing the repertoire. All in an attempt to give Scottish Ballet, in a desperate state when he took over, a new identity.

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Umbrella's birthday party was a joyous celebration of movement and music

Jann Parry
Sunday October 5, 2003
The Observer

Dance Umbrella gala Sadler's Wells, London EC1
Michael Clark Sadler's Wells, London EC1
Scottish Ballet Edinburgh Playhouse

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David Dougill sees an uneven mix of new blood in Scotland, old gods in Birmingham


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review from The Independent.

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Article from the Scotsman on Scottish Ballest's laest, slightly risque production.

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