Two Page Spreads to Download from 'Scottish Ballet'

In 2005 Ashley Page and designer Antony McDonald created a new version of Cinderella that was as much a moral tale as it was a true romance. On the previous pages, exotic princesses do some last minute primping for the ball (left to right: Limor Ziv, Nathalie Dupouy, Kara McLaughlin, Victoria Willard). Opposite, bad treatment from Cinderella’s stepmother (Eve Mutso) and stepsisters (Diana Loosmore and Patricia Hines). Below, Cinderella (Claire Robertson) turns, hopefully, to her father (Jarkko Lehmus) for support against her new ‘family’, whose cruelty is matched by their appallingly awful taste. Overleaf, Martina Forioso (page 120) as one of the four seasons who are at the beck and call of Cinderella’s godmother (Soon Ja Lee, page 121).

When Richard Alston agreed to make a new, one-act Carmen for Scottish Ballet, it was the first time he had actually set out to choreograph a storytelling ballet. Known worldwide as a dance-maker at the forefront of the UK contemporary scene, Alston had also decided that he would seize the opportunity of working with classically trained dancers to explore how his own movement vocabulary might mesh and cross over with theirs. So pointe-shoes were in. But castanets and phoney flamenco were definitely out.
Alston’s Carmen would have a fierce, independent spirit, but she would not be the kind of clichéd ‘rose between the teeth’ femme fatale that so often flounces through opera productions and some other ballets. Instead, Alston pored over Prosper Merimée’s short novel and came away with a strong sense of three young people – Carmen, Don José and Escamillo – whose lives briefly, and fatefully, intertwine. Fate would enter the action, in the symbolic figure of the fortune teller, and it would sound throughout the piece in the percussive clangour of Rodin Schedrin’s Carmen Suite, a vivid reduction of the Bizet score that uses only strings and percussion and lasts for under an hour.
On the previous pages In Alston’s ballet, Martina Forioso (Carmen) is ready to catch the eye of any passing soldier she fancies. William Smith, as the toreador Escamillo, is ready to engage with danger, whether in the bull-ring or the boudoir.
Left: Carmen may be in handcuffs, but the glint in her eye reveals she already knows that hapless, inexperi-enced Don José (Daniel Davidson) will be putty in her hands. Overleaf: he didn’t want her to die, he just wanted her back... Don José looks on in horror at Carmen’s outstretched body.