© Andrew Ross and Scottish Ballet 'Cinderella' reviews 'Episodes' reviews 'MiddleSexGorge' reviews 'Artifact' reviews Robertson in reviews Lehmus in reviews recent SB reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

This is a company with a distinctive personality, a deeply felt commitment to hard work and a refreshingly honest belief in what they do. And to top all that the dancers appear fully to understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule and Jarkko Lehmus’s concept of the Father in the season’s opener, Page’s new version of Cinderella, had me utterly baffled. Neither did the rest of the ballet, though a smash hit north of the border when first created last year, travel too well with many of its mixed messages clashing.

Candy colours jar in Antony McDonald’s 18th century designs rather than deliver a modern perk, not to mention the ubiquitous telephone, and Soon Ja Lee’s (fairy) Godmother fails to rise to the flamboyance of her Tina Turner hairdo. Happily Paul Liburd’s Dancing Master has all the camp evil of a Haitian voodoo priest that anyone could wish for. But as the eponymous heroine, it is Claire Robertson’s ballet. Her apparently unselfconscious stage presence even surmounts the chilling contrivance of bare feet in the kitchen, but, partnered by Erik Cavallari’s Prince she brings a lyric luminosity to some of Page’s most beautiful steps in the Ballroom love duets.
 

Robertson also dominates the first half of William Forsythe’s Suite From Artifact that closes Scottish Ballet’s second programme, a Triple Bill also including Balanchine’s Episodes and Petronio’s MiddleSexGorge. Partnered by a hard working Lehmus, Robertson is generous of movement, always cool but always at the limit, a fascinating combination of opposing qualities perfectly matching Forythe’s spiky but romantic interpretation of Bach’s violin Chacone in D minor.

Earlier this month Page admitted to nerves about the visit, but has completely vindicated the trip. Scottish Ballet is a modern, well established and artistically rounded dance company we can all be proud of.