simply magical: members of Scottish Ballet perform some of the choreography for Aladdin, which will premiere at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre on December 20
A LARGE, off-duty dragon snoozes at the foot of the golden Imperial Throne - which is all of four inches high, being (at present) just a glimmer on a model stage-set for Scottish Ballet's forthcoming Aladdin. Various Jewels dance into view - still in unadorned rehearsal mufti, though nearby drawings hint at the splendour that will be Sapphire. There's music, and a sense of the magic to come though the Flying Carpet is still an illusion, but one that is being crafted especially for the production by Paul Kieve, a Gold Star member of the Inner Magic Circle.
For those of us clustered on stage at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre - where Aladdin will have its premiere on December 20 - such public proof that the production will go ahead is like the last-but-one instalment in a
story that has spun on for longer than Scheherazade's original 1001 nights.
Scottish Ballet first spoke to Robert Cohan about choreographing this family Christmas show as far back as 1996. He agreed, and started pulling together a highly prestigious creative team: composer Carl Davis, designer Lez Brotherston, and stage illusionist Paul Kieve. Their deadline was December 1997.
Now, the fact that the curtain did not go up as planned has nothing whatsoever to do with the creative team. Brotherston had just finished his model, Cohan and Davis had thrashed out a scenario that worked for both of them, and Davis had a draft score down on paper when a far-from-magic rug was pulled out from underneath the whole project.
Speaking at yesterday's launch, Cohan explained that, in order to make the production appropriately spectacular and magical, he felt they needed laser-light effects. ''I didn't know, then, how much that would cost - I know now. And it's #40,000. But I knew we couldn't meet that from existing company budgets, so we applied for lottery funding.'' He smiles, a little lop-sidedly, as he says this - because most of us already know the unhappy ending to this chapter. The lottery funding was refused - a response that was generally seen as tied in to the raft of troubles nowadays labelled The Merge.
Scottish Ballet had not behaved according to (a now-abandoned) plan that would have melded it with Scottish Opera. The results - the enforced stepping down of the board and the artistic director, Galina Samsova - caused ripples that have only been calmed in the past 12 months with Robert North's appointment as artistic director and the formation of a new administrative infrastructure.
Time, certainly, to let those dismal spectres rest in peace - but also time, at last, to bring Aladdin into being, not least because it will be the company's first new, full-length ballet in seven years. ''Robert North has rubbed the lamp and said: 'Do it!''' was how Carl Davis put it, as he settled himself at the piano for a genial lecture-demonstration of how he's put this particular score together.
Like Cohan, he's aware of the need to negotiate a complementary balance between the serious and the spectacular and it's clear that, alongside the technical business of time signatures, sequence lengths, and significant motifs, these two have discussed the various levels on which this popular fairy tale works.
For Cohan there's a powerful dramatic narrative - maybe an Everyman quality - to this story of a boy's journey from irresponsible ne'er-do-well to romantic hero that has as much to do with the individual and the power of love, personal courage, and wisdom as with any other captive genie. But - as he's already shown in the works he's made for Scottish Ballet, Midsummer Night's Dream (1993) and Four Seasons (1996) - Cohan is adept at weaving observations on human nature into choreography that is utterly engaging in itself, and more than ready to entertain and amuse.
He refers, with a mischievous
twinkle, to Balanchine as he introduces some of his own Jewels (a section using pointe-shoes that can be staged, independently, on small-scale tours) but moments later he's cheerfully talking of family audiences and crowd-pleasers like Chinese dragons. In the same way, Davis speaks of sophisticated musical forms and different Eastern cultures - the pentatonic scale that is instant aural Chinoiserie - but then adds: ''It's a Christmas show, with children who won't be interested in pentatonic scales and Indian ragas,'' before sweeping into the shimmering grandeur that is the Lamp theme. Paul Kieve - whose most recent stage connection was with The Witches of Eastwick - has been delving into Victorian elusions as well as new technologies so that Aladdin will be a true feast of visual magic, some danced, some done by (shhhh . . . there's a confidentiality clause). Colin Falconer - Lez Brotherston's
assistant - will now pick up the design reigns and create the costumes.
The price of finally liberating the Genie is #400,000 (production costs only) - the Bank of Scotland is calling ''open sesame'' to its vaults and sponsoring the tour that takes Aladdin to Inverness, Aberdeen, Hull, and Glasgow after the Festival Theatre has had first rub of the lamp, as it were.
n Aladdin opens at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre on December 20 - the company are at the same venue, October 4-7, with Robert North's Romeo and Juliet.
