Scottish ballet

With the major companies largely on their summer breaks, the Edinburgh International Festival struggles to programme a high standard of dance (though, having said that, I have memories of being taken in short trousers to the 1967 festival and seeing New York City Ballet during its glorious prime). The dearth tends to be masked by falling back on what used to be called ‘ethnic’ product and that peculiarly French phenomenon, the multimedia event spanning circus, mime, video and spoken text, usually sewn up with some thread of an over-arching theme thrown in. This year it’s the turn of something called Room, presented by La Compagnie du Hanneton, whose chief cook

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale of a young man turned into a novelty kitchen gadget by an evil rodent isn’t obvious dance material, and yet here we are, up to our plastic tiaras in sugar plums. Four Nutcrackers in London alone and an average of 200 productions, amateur and professional, across the Atlantic. How? Why? Sharp pens greeted the 1892 St Petersburg première — ‘it’s a pity that so much fine music is expended on nonsense’ — and within two decades it was little more than a box of delights to be raided by directors and choreographers, blithely borrowing anything they fancied from Lev Ivanov’s choreography or Tchaikovsky’s ravishing, bittersweet score, regardless

The OED defines ‘gala’ as ‘a festive occasion’. In the ballet world this usually translates as a handful of stars, a mile of tulle and more triple fouettés than you can shake a stick at. Most balletgoers could put a half-decent programme together in their sleep: a firecracker duet (Swan, black), the odd solo party piece (Swan, dying), a dash of romance (Romeo, Manon) and the dear old Don Q. pas de deux. After a year being drip-fed small-screen ballet, the prospect of a little bling and bravura generated a buzz of excitement around Dame Darcey Bussell’s charity gala. The Hall (Albert) was hired, sponsors were found, eight major companies