UNDER Christopher Hampson’s leadership, Scottish Ballet has not shrunk from innovation and risk-taking. In transposing the 1870 ballet Coppelia (Festival Theatre, run ended; touring Scotland this autumn) – with its famous score by Leo Delibes – to a dystopian near future in which an amoral, hi-tech mega-capitalist believes he is on the brink of creating a thinking, feeling, plausibly human robot, the company has excelled itself.
In the original ballet, Dr Coppelius is trying to animate a female doll he has made. This supposed “comic” idea (which was originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Leon) carries its own disquieting, misogynistic connotations (built, as it is, around a male fantasy of the physically “ideal” doll-woman).
