When Ashley Page was asked to take over the Scottish Ballet, his demands were uncompromising: “His bottom line was that he had no interest in running a cut-price Kirov or Royal Ballet. He envisioned Scottish Ballet as a small, flexible ensemble capable of performing modern dance and contemporary classical works. He wanted to be able to stage the neoclassical masterworks of Balanchine at one extreme and the austerely postmodernist choreo-graphy of Trisha Brown at the other. To drive this vision, however, Page insisted he would need a larger budget and “a major clearout of the existing dancers”.