Eyebrows were raised when Ashley Page was appointed artistic director of Scottish Ballet. Four years and an OBE later, how's he doing?

Page had been regarded as something of a feather-ruffler during his 27 years at the Royal Ballet in London, first as a dancer and latterly as a choreographer. "I was always the one who did the piece with the difficult music and the rather questionable subject matter or the extreme design," he says. "They used me as the wild card; the joker in the pack. Not that they didn't take the work seriously, but if they wanted to shake the audience up a bit, one of my pieces would go into the programme."

When he was appointed as Scottish Ballet's artistic director in 2002, he says, eyebrows were raised. "I think they all thought, Why do they want someone like that? What's he going to do?'"

It may have looked like a desperate measure, but then, desperate measures were needed. It's no secret that by 2001 the company had reached the brink of collapse, drained of morale and bereft of artistic vision. Four years down the line, the decision of then chief executive Chris Barron to appoint Page looks shrewd indeed. With the help, he insists, of a supportive board and staff, Scottish Ballet has gradually been restored to the award-winning condition that befits a national company.

Some of the signs of this rejuvenation are easy to see. Construction work has just begun on an £11 million project to convert Tramway - the arts venue in Glasgow's southside - into a permanent base, expected to replace the ballet's rather rundown West Princes Street premises by the end of 2008. The Scottish Executive has announced a £1.1m hike in core funding for 2007-08. And Page has extended his contract to lead the company until 2012. This decision, he says, was contingent on the increase in funding, though he admits to signing before it was absolutely confirmed.

"Having achieved what we'd achieved so far, we couldn't develop it without the funding going up," he says. "The dancers are hungry to be onstage, and ever since I've been here I've been promising that it's going to get better. They've been very patient and worked very hard, believing that that's going to happen.

"But they can't hang around forever. It's a short career. They'd go - I wouldn't blame them - and then we'd be back to square one. So it would be very dishonest of me to sign up for another term without having some sort of certainty that we could develop."

Page may not look like an establishment figure, with his shaved head, ear studs, big boots and chunky jewellery, but this son of Kent has been embraced by Scotland's cultural and political leadership. In 2005, the company was invited to appear at the Edinburgh International Festival for the first time in 20 years; a return invitation followed a year later. And in October last year, Page and a small group of dancers accompanied Jack McConnell on a cultural mission to Toronto. The Scottish Executive has actively supported the new building project; and has helped pave the way for a planned tour of China next year - the company's first full-scale overseas engagement under Page.

For now, though, his most immediate concern is a revival of Cinderella, the second Christmas production he has mounted since arriving at Scottish Ballet. Like his first full-length ballet The Nutcracker in 2003, it is a traditional piece with cheeky overtones and dark undercurrents, created with his long-term collaborator, the designer Antony McDonald. The Nutcracker proved that this "joker in the pack" was capable of pleasing traditionalists, even if its sugar plums were spiked with more intoxicating liquors drawn from ETA Hoffmann's original tale. "I think they were pleasantly surprised because I have a lot of reverence for the classical tradition," says Page. "That's what I've been steeped in and, actually, I do know all about it and how it works."

With Cinderella, he was able to build on The Nutcracker's success and the company's growing confidence. He and McDonald also tapped into the primal depths of this most popular of fairy tales, whose roots can be traced back to ninth century China.

"There's this fantastic book for researching fairy stories and going into the psychology of them," he says, producing a copy of Bruno Bettelheim's 1976 classic, The Uses Of Enchantment: The Meaning And Importance Of Fairy Tales. "We referred to that, and to some other writers such as Marina Warner, who write in a similar way about the role of the mother in fairy stories and that sort of thing. It's endlessly fascinating. You dig really deep into the darker side of it where these things really come from."

The result is a boisterous and colourful ballet with decidedly unsettling elements, in which Cinderella's deceased mother is a more palpable presence than in more conventional versions of the story, and more explicitly associated with the fairy godmother. Something of the feral cruelty expressed in the Grimm brothers' version has also been restored: for example, the ugly sisters chop off their toes trying to squeeze into the prince's shoe and ultimately have their eyes pecked out by doves. Page pushed this aspect even further when he hit on a macabre new resonance for Cinderella's name, as the sisters smear her face with her dead mother's ashes. This was a risky test of the audience's taste, he admits, but seemed to go down well.

Another conspicuous aspect of Page and McDonald's interpretation is the garish design that surrounds the stepmother's tenure of the family home. Its focal point is a painting of the usurping matriarch in the style of Andy Warhol, complete with red eyes that light up. Although the setting is loosely 18th century, there are also jarring anachronisms such as a giant fridge and a telephone.

"You could dwell too much on the dark side," says Page of these sly comic touches. "It's also a Christmas family entertainment and it needs to appeal on many levels. The humorous nature of it can help to enhance the story. The way the room looks - and the fact that she orders the ballgowns from a catalogue - says a lot about the woman who runs that house."

Cinderella also marks a turning point for Scottish Ballet's standing within the UK. In March this year, the company took the show to Sadler's Wells - its first performances at the prestigious London venue since a none-too-successful visit in 1999. "It was like me going home again," says Page. "It was fantastic to go down there and have virtually full houses all week. The moment the curtain went up on the first show you could sense an incredible warmth from the audience. By the end of the week we felt we had them in our hand."

With the assistance of Scottish Ballet's time-served deputy director Paul Tyers - without whom, Page insists, the company's reinvigoration would not have been possible - he is now in the process of restaging Cinderella for this Christmas. It will be revived in Glasgow and Edinburgh, then tour to Cardiff, Belfast and Aberdeen.

Reviving an existing work is of course easier than creating one from scratch, but does allow Page - a self-confessed "fusspot" - to make improvements. "It's quite good to revisit it and go, OK we can do this better this year.' That didn't happen much when I was at the Royal because they just wanted new things all the time. That was exciting, of course, but if something's been worthwhile it's nice to have it back and make it even better."

Meanwhile, Page and McDonald are already working on next year's Christmas extravaganza. He can't reveal what it is yet, but promises something in a similar vein. "It'll be bigger than Nutcracker and Cinderella," he says. "More acts, longer, but yeah, same kind of thing."

Before that, there'll be a Scottish Ballet April tour taking in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The programme consists of two pieces from this year's Edinburgh Festival programme - George Balanchine's Agon and Krzysztof Pastor's In Light and Shadow - plus a revival of Page's own love-triangle piece Room Of Cooks. Its climax, though, will be Othello, originally choreographed in 1971 by Peter Darrell, founder of Scottish Ballet, and now revived to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.

In the spring, the company's ties with Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT) will be strengthened when a new piece by Scottish Ballet's Australian soloist Diana Loosmore is unveiled as part of an SDT programme in February, under the auspices of the Peter Darrell Award for choreography.

Plans for the summer will be announced in the next few months and, if the renovation of Inverness's Eden Court Theatre is completed on schedule, the company will present work there as part of the Highlands 2007 festival.

In the meantime, Page is at last finding time away from rehearsals. "I have been pretty much in the studio solidly since I've been here," he admits. "And I need to do the other part of my job - going to see other companies and choreographers, looking for possible new commissions - which I'm starting to do now."

He has also built relationships with the ballet training schools: this will help him to use the company to nurture talent. "That thing I always wanted to do - build dancers up through the ranks - is starting to happen," he says. "We've promoted several dancers over the past few years from the bottom ranks to principals and soloists. That's working, but it needs me to go and do the business that makes it happen. Now we've got this funding I can be a bit more proactive on that side of the job - which will probably give me a fresher energy when I come back in, rather than being here all the time."

There's no prospect just yet that he'll have much more time to spend with his wife, former Royal Ballet dancer Nicola Roberts, and their two children. "My family - who very good-naturedly came up to join me after I'd been here a year - do actually put up with a lot of not seeing me much," he admits. "And I used to read a lot and go to see art exhibitions, films, theatre, concerts, that sort of thing. I don't often have the energy and work finishes too late.

"So I don't have as full a life as I would like, but I've been completely re-enlivened by doing the job. I'm happier now than I have been for a while."

As for the 50th birthday - and the letters after his name - he's not quite sure that he wants to feel "older and wiser". In fine fettle, though: there's no denying that.

Scottish Ballet's Bank of Scotland-sponsored Cinderella is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, December 9-30, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, January 4-13 and His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, February 14-17