Do magic portals really exist?

Ask dancers who have spent time in NDT2 – the prestigious "youth wing" of Netherlands Dance Theatre – and, over and over, they'll say the experience was like having a fabulous, extraordinary door opening wide for them. That door led them into an environment where artistry and creativity ran like an electric current through every level of the company's home base in The Hague. Once you were connected to that energy field – were willing to push your own standards and expectations beyond any shadow of doubtful "making do" – then other doors, even ones not on any secret wish list, would also open. If you had the talent, the zeal and the determination then, as the touring schedules of NDT2 make clear, you could have the world at your feet.

Hundreds of young hopefuls turn out from all points of the globe any time there is an NDT2 audition. The company has an upper age limit of 23, so opportunities do arise for dancers who are 17 and over to join the select band that currently numbers only 16. In truth, Yorkshire-born David Ledger – currently the only Briton in NDT2 – never cherished any dreams of becoming a dancer, let alone part of a high-end international outfit. He didn't even set foot in a studio until he was 13 – quite late, when you consider that some dancers are taking their first steps almost as soon as they can toddle.

Ledger's journey began when one of his school teachers suggested he audition for a training course run by Yorkshire Young Dancers. He recalls watching and copying what other, more practised folk were doing during the movement classes, and then making up a dance to a song he liked for the testing solo section, by borrowing some moves from a music video. It was all very amateur hour, he reckoned.

By the end of that day, the door to his future career had opened just wide enough for him to start training locally before going on to do two years at the Rambert School in London. From there, he was offered an apprenticeship with NDT2 - where, after just one season, he was given a full contract. He is now, at 21, officially a member of the company. "I know, it's almost shocking, isn't it?" he says. "This is my first job, straight out of training and I'm here. In this dream situation."

You have to ask: why is this a dream situation? That's when the words start to pour out. "It's about how you can really develop, not just professionally but as a person," he says. "As a dancer, you really do feel that you've been accepted into all this lineage, this history of dance. It's in the repertoire, so you learn it, but you live it, because it's also in the way people work here. There is such an emphasis on working creatively – being actively involved, giving input to choreographers, or even choreographing yourself – that challenges you artistically and as an individual. You have to take responsibility for yourself, not just in the studio or on-stage but off-stage as well. You learn about yourself. And because there is such an amazing mix of people in NDT2 just now, you learn so much about other cultures. It does, yes, open all kinds of doors inside your head."

Some people assume that NDT2 has a repertoire of hand-me-downs from the parent company. Not so. Even if there is a shared roster of choreographers, NDT2 has its own cache of distinctive work that is often created directly on the dancers. The programme that comes to Edinburgh this week has three different pieces, all made within the past four years.

Lightfoot Leon's Studio 2, to music by Arvo Part, has the dancers negotiating a rising ramp while mirrors reflect their movements from every angle – a major "no place to hide" challenge in terms of technique and body-line. Jiri Kylian's award-winning Gods And Dogs makes intense use of shadows, with the dancers' own bodies – often moving like lolloping, crawling animals –casting huge shades on the backcloth, as if playing darkly with the anagram reversals of "dog" and "God".

Finally, there's the exuberant and wonderfully wayward Cacti by Alexander Ekman in which the entire company gets to grips with moving large slabs of solid material while a wry voice spoofs academic theories of ritual dance. Bodies become instruments for percussion. There is a lovely disco boogie interlude and some breathtakingly crisp formation semaphore. And there are, as promised, cacti. It's a witty piece that has wowed audiences.

One of the touring programme's choreo-graphers (and, like Ledger, a Brit), Paul Lighfoot felt the same as Ledger when he joined NDT2, way back in 1985. Today Lightfoot is not only one half of the sought-after choreographic partnership Lightfoot Leon, he has recently been appointed as artistic director of Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT), NDT2's iconic parent. He's on record admitting it could all have been very different.

"I really think I joined with blinkers on," he says. "I'd been accepted by the Royal Ballet School when I was 15 and assumed, like most of my peers there, that I'd just progress on into the Royal Ballet, and that would be that." But again – like Ledger – a chance encounter with a wise outside eye changed everything. Jiri Kylian, the driving force who powered NDT to the influential forefront of 20th-century contemporary dance, had been watching a class that Lightfoot was in. When it ended, he asked if Lightfoot would be interested in spending a short time in The Hague with NDT.

"I didn't even really know who he was, or what NDT did," recalls Lightfoot before adding, with a chuckle, that "a friend said to me, 'You have to dance naked there' – but I went all the same. I opened the door, and I knew this is where I wanted to be. It was a creative environment, a totally different kind of artistry." The blinkers came off. Not only did Lightfoot make his mark as a dancer, first with NDT2 then with NDT, he also evolved – with his partner Sol Leon, whom he met soon after joining NDT2 – into a choreographer of pungent theatricality and invention.

Being in charge of decision-making and artistic policy at NDT was not, however, a door that Lightfoot was especially keen to rush through when Kylian stepped down in 1999. Now in his mid-forties, he is disarmingly frank about thwarting the expectations of so many, both in the organisation and across the dance community.

"There was all this 'Crown Prince' and 'heir-in-waiting' stuff going on and I really, really disliked all that," he explains. "Huge pressure, but I suppose I found it irritating because it didn't feel like my choice. Not then. Now, it's different. Now I feel ready for that responsibility. I want it." Perhaps the fact that Lightfoot Leon have proved themselves as a world-class choreographic team, much in demand outwith the NDT group has influenced Lightfoot's thinking. You sense, despite his relaxed (and often humorous) take on stressful scenarios that he would never have wanted to be seen as a shoo-in or a wannabe Kylian, stepping into a role simply because he was NDT family.

Or perhaps the recent turbulent times at NDT – the funding issues and the restructuring of the Dutch government's cultural policy that threatened the organisation's very identity – have persuaded Lightfoot to become, as it were, the doorkeeper to the magic portal in The Hague. "Of course the whole money thing, the effect of cutbacks, was distressing," he says, "but what really hurt was the suggestion we should be a 'regional entity'. As if nothing that Jiri, or the company – all the artists who have been the core of this wonderful creative enterprise for over 50 years – had had any real impact here in Holland. All over the world, yes. But not in our homeland. So that's a door that has to be pushed open."

NDT2 has its only Scottish dates at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh on March 23 and 24