The Sunday Times
23 August 2009

Emo meets Bowie in a Scottish Ballet production for the modern age performed at the Playhouse in Edinburgh

Shellsuits, high ponytails and dancers selling vodka out of old prams are probably not what most people expect to see on a trip to the ballet. In the hands of Ian Spink, however, ballet can look very different from the more usual confection.

Brought in as a guest choreographer for Scottish Ballet, and charged with redesigning Stravinsky’s Petrushka for the company’s big Edinburgh Festival show, Spink has set the story in 1990s Russia. He wanted to get away from the traditional treatment of ballet towards something “much more anarchic and rough around the edges”.

The story of a puppet performing at a carnival has morphed into the tale of a dysfunctional boy in Doc Marten boots, being carted around the country in a travelling circus.

The original fairground backdrop has been transformed into a rowdy, glasnost-era market scene, where gypsies rub shoulders with rich women in fur coats, all queuing up to buy cheap cuts of meat, stolen video recorders and bottles of perfume that fell off the back of a lorry.

In Spink’s version, instead of a puppet show arriving to entertain the crowds, it is a rusty meat truck that rolls into town, spray-painted with Russian graffiti, and containing three performers suffering from cabin fever.

Petrushka was first performed by Ballets Russes in 1911 in Paris, but the original characters are nowhere to be seen in Spink’s updated version. Almost a century after its first airing, the three main puppets, a ballerina, a Moor and a puppet boy made of straw and sawdust, have been swapped for a pole-dancing showgirl, a muscled strongman and a New Romantic angry young man.

“I like the idea that Petrushka is potentially dangerous and powerful, but it’s coming out of someone who doesn’t look physically strong, and seems quite childlike,”

“The original Petrushka part is basically a comedia dell’arte character, quite similar to our Punch,” Spink explains on a break between rehearsals. We are sitting in Scottish Ballet’s vast new £11mheadquarters, designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects, in the Tramway complex in Glasgow. Spink began rehearsing with the company in July. He is artistic director of Citymoves, an Aberdeen dance company, and has worked as guest choreographer for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Scottish Opera and the Rambert Dance Company.

“Petrushka is prone to rages, and is a very violent, angsty character,” Spink says. “But people tolerate him because he’s just so mad and outrageous. I wanted to make him relevant to a contemporary audience, so the look that the designer (Yannis Thavoris) and I wanted for him is youthful and romantic. It’s like a mixture of emo and David Bowie.”

Spink is regarded as a leading creative force in modern dance in the past 30 years. So thinks Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Ashley Page, who commissioned Spink to choreograph the work. After a year away from the Edinburgh International Festival, the company wanted to return with something radical.

Its last EIF production, Ride the Beast, used the controversial American choreographer, Stephen Petronio, to create passionate dance sequences around music from Radiohead. This year’s Russian theme was chosen to commemorate the centenary of Sergei Diaghilev, who began directing the Ballets Russes in 1909.

Where most choreographers would probably begin by explaining the dance moves, Spink encourages each dancer to work from a theatrical point of view, focusing on their character first.

“We weren’t sure how to approach things when Ian first started,” admits Daniel Davidson, 24, who is playing the part of Petrushka. “It’s unusual for us to work this way.

You would normally build a character around the dance moves, but Ian completely turns that on its head.”

“I like the idea that Petrushka is potentially dangerous and powerful, but it’s coming out of someone who doesn’t look physically strong, and seems quite childlike,” says Spink.

After spending six months poring over images to establish what the look of the production would be, he found a photo of David Bowie with green hair, wearing sparkly green trousers which were then copied for Davidson’s costume.

Besides doing away with traditional ballet shoes (there is only one pair of pointe shoes in the production, but lots of chunky boots or strappy heels), Spink also called in experts to teach different dance styles to the company. Tony Mills, of Freshmess, an Edinburgh dance collective, was brought in to teach the male dancers how to breakdance, and a pole dancer advised on the showgirl’s routines. Stravinsky’s original version had street dancers, but Spink wanted to bring them up to date as breakdancing B-boys and stockinged, Vegas-style dancers.

“The Edinburgh Festival is a time when you can be as adventurous and experimental as you like,” says Spink. “It’s almost expected.”

After spending more than a year planning the show, and leading the dancers through gruelling rehearsals, what will Spink do after these three performances of his Petrushka? “I shall go back up to Aberdeen for my sins,” he jokes in his whispery-soft Australian accent. “I guess I must have been very wicked.”

Scottish Ballet’s Petrushka, Scenes de Ballet and Workwithinwork will be performed at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, September 4-5, 0131 473 2000, www.scottishballet.co.uk Scottish Ballet 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Tramway, Glasgow, September 1-30

Go here to look at photos of rehearsals on Scottish Ballet’s Flickr.