Dance review: Scottish Ballet: Up Close

IT IS inevitable that Scottish Ballet's work will be compromised during its tour of smaller venues – no orchestra, virtually no set and a condensed cast – yet there's still a huge amount you can do in an intimate space to convey your merit. So it's a shame Scottish Ballet's Up Close tour doesn't endear itself to audiences as much as it could.

Regular visitors to Scottish Ballet's large-scale shows will know this is a company rooted in classical technique, but pushing in a contemporary direction. Those unfamiliar will simply see the word "ballet" in the title and arrive armed with a host of expectations – "It's not ballet if there's nae tutus," complained a woman behind be during the interval, and while Scottish Ballet can't be expected to pander to such a narrow view, she had a point.

Of the five works performed, only two were en pointe and the other three fell squarely into the contemporary dance category. A passionate pas de deux from Krzysztof Pastor's superb Romeo and Juliet was a sure-fire crowd-pleaser, as was Ashley Page's Pennies From Heaven. Yet the other works – Diana Loosmore's Chasing Ghosts, Paul Liburd's From Where and Page's Room of Cooks – despite their individual appeal, felt like overkill.

Having won over audiences in the cities, Scottish Ballet needs to convince the rest of the country. Whether this is the programme to do it is up for question.