More brawl than ballet

When Scottish Ballet was told that its new focus would be contemporary dance and its artistic director's contract wouldn't be renewed, all hell broke loose. Nadine Meisner asks the main players if they're sticking to their guns

Two words provoked the furore: "contemporary dance". In other contexts, they are harmlessly commonplace, but when, last August, Scottish Ballet linked them to the company's future orientation, all hell broke loose. Scotland finally acquired its own arts soap, some time after the Royal Opera House's weekly crises entertained the nation. Yards of newspaper print, petitions, reports, statistics and cries of, "Resign!" erupted, followed by a Scottish parliamentary inquiry.

Scottish Ballet, the guilty announcement had said, would position itself as "a major new force in contemporary dance". Attached to this was the other declaration, that the company would not renew the two-year contract of its artistic director, Robert North, when it expired in August. He protested, the dancers protested, at both this and the company's remake. "It is like telling a football team that they are very good sportsmen," said North, "but that they have to play rugby." They demanded the resignation of the company's board (shared with Scottish Opera) and its chief executive, Christopher Barron. The attached Dance School for Scotland and other schools weighed in, worried at the knock-on effect of the squeeze on professional ballet.

Scottish Dance Theatre – which, under Janet Smith (North's ex-wife, coincidentally), has been establishing itself as Scotland's premier small contemporary-dance outfit – voiced its alarm at a possible David-and-Goliath rivalry. And then the select committee for culture, media and sport roundly condemned the board, although both the Arts minister and the head of the Scottish Arts Council supported the opposite side.

North, an American, feels that the odds were stacked against him almost from the start. But he should by now be used to the precariousness of a ballet director's status, having led companies in Turin, Gothenburg and Verona in just nine years. Before that, he made his mark in British dance as a performer and choreographer with London Contemporary Dance Theatre and Rambert Ballet. (He also directed Rambert for five years.) He is trained in classical and contemporary dance, and his pieces blend the two in a populist, middle-of-the-road modernism – easy on the eye; easy on the ear. His sporty hit Troy Game has been in the repertories of self-respecting modern companies all over the world.

In his first year in Scotland, he increased audiences from 43,000 to 60,000 and further diversified them. He launched the idea of shows aimed at children, such as the box-office-busting Snowman (which he choreographed), and at adults scared off by extremes – anything too modern or too classical. "There are people in Scotland who are afraid of men in tights, and others who are suspicious of contemporary dance. So we're trying to get them in with pieces like Carmen, which isn't danced on point and is very accessible." Clearly, given his own dance formation, he's not against more radically contemporary pieces and had thought to include some in his programming. "But to do that, you need more budget, because you don't get the box office."

All this, though, cuts little ice with his critics. They say his choreography aims too low, resulting in deplorably facile work, as is attested by the Arts Council of England's refusal to support a Scottish Ballet tour on qualitative grounds. They condemn his minimal commitment to new work and his preference for adding existing pieces he has made for other companies, the only exception being a full-evening Aladdin by Robert Cohan. Consequently, they dislike his domination of the repertoire (about 50 per cent).

The board, according to Christopher Barron, wants world-class standards and a higher profile, with touring not just in Scotland but in the rest of the UK and abroad. "Our £2.8m subsidy represents 78 per cent of Scotland's money for dance," he remarks, "and that gives us one hell of a responsibility." He wants a company that can enjoy stability and identity, luxuries that disappeared when its founder, Peter Darrell, died in 1987.

He says that he wants Scottish Ballet to come out of the shadows it has been occupying while Scottish Opera (£7.5m a year) hogs the limelight. "Funding got terribly dry in the 1990s. The director at the time, Galina Samsova, tried to build Scottish Ballet into a large classical company, but when she left, in 1997, the dancers were cut from 44 to 36. So that was a sad, important moment that gave the company less capacity but started defining what it might do in the future. There has been a lot of argument about that ever since." He says the company will remain at its present size; he is even mooting the possibility of a small additional apprentice group to nurture young native talent.

But how will Scottish Ballet achieve that, with a £262,000 deficit, a derisory grant and a contemporary-dance repertoire that goes against the majority taste for traditional classics? Barron is lobbying for a whopping £1m more in the 2003-4 grant, staking a claim in the Scottish Arts Council's pitch for an increase in government provision for the arts. The company is also taking advantage of a new cross-border touring fund, initiated by the Scottish and English Arts Councils, which takes it to England this week with North's Carmen and, in the opposite direction, will bring Birmingham Royal Ballet and Northern Ballet Theatre to Scotland. Success, though, depends on excellence, and for that Barron believes it is essential that Scottish Ballet be "classically based, with rigorous training".

At this point, we all do a double take. When is contemporary dance classical ballet? Answer: when you are woolly with your definitions. True, it's not easy, when dance is constantly dissolving into stylistic divisions and different people mean different things. Even so, all the hubbub, it seems, might have been averted if Scottish Ballet had phrased its volcanic announcement otherwise. If it had said, for instance: "Well, we want to stay classically based, but we want to broaden the repertoire and increase the proportion of commissioned work. We only want to complete the trend started by Robert North and become a truly modern classical company. But we don't think North is the man to take us on to that next phase."

The exact style of the company will depend on the director appointed. But Barron doesn't rule out small-scale classics such as Frederick Ashton's The Two Pigeons, recently performed and likely to please the more traditional audiences in the regions. It would be good to see Peter Darrell's dramatic works back on stage, a unique legacy that would give Scottish Ballet the distinctiveness it craves. The large-scale 19th-century classics are, though, beyond the company's present dimension, and Barron does not want to see cut-down versions.

North, on the other hand, is not so sure that Scottish Ballet will keep its classical base – especially, he says, when you consider the candidates who have applied for his job. "The list is more suited to Rambert than a ballet company." The gossip machine has been busy for months, reporting that the shortlist includes the Royal Ballet's Ashley Page and an African-American, Donald Byrd. All are choreographers, but that is not Barron's prime requirement. Breadth of repertoire is more important.

"They will have a greater responsibility for curating other people's work," says Barron. "I envisage less work by the director than at present." That, too, stirs North's mild incredulity. "If it's just a repertory company, it's very hard to have an identity. You need a particular point of view, not a lot of different choreographers. The Royal Ballet was Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Netherlands Dance Theatre is Jiri Kylian and Hans Van Manen."

Netherlands Dance Theatre is often cited as a company that Scottish Ballet might want to imitate. If it opts for more of a director-curator, though, it may be closer to some of France's regional modern-classical companies, such as Lyon Ballet and Ballet du Rhin in Alsace. Both tour widely, nationally and internationally, and have diverse contemporary repertoires, although Ballet du Rhin does have a resident choreographer and is staging a straightforward Giselle next year. If that is the model that Barron has in mind, he will need the sustained, generous financial commitment they receive in France.

But there are other, antithetical models to be found in Europe, as described by North. "What they do now in Germany is take a large ballet company and change it to a small contemporary group – it's cheaper and they don't use the orchestra. Then, after a year, there's no audience, so they ask: do we even need a company? The company is shut down, and the opera gets the spare money." That, needless to say, is the alternative, gloomier scenario.

Scottish Ballet tours with 'Carmen' to the Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent (01782 213800) 29 May to 1 June; New Theatre, Hull (01482 226655) 6-8 June; New Victoria Theatre, Woking (01483 545900) 11-15 June