Family: Blow your offspring away with a trip to the ballet

The first time you take your children to a proper production of a ballet, by a good company, they will be utterly astounded.

While ballets performed at Christmas could be seen as the sole preserve of the party-befrocked six-year-old girls who've been galumphing round ballet classes all year, every member of the family will be delighted by the experience of a live production, and I do mean boys too.

This year Scottish Ballet's Cinderella is touring what the company is calling its most glamorous production yet.

The set and costumes are designed by Antony McDonald in a style described as "Vivienne Westwood meets Andy Warhol in 18th-century France" and the show has been choreographed by celebrated artistic director Ashley Page.

The Scottish Ballet Orchestra perform the famous Prokofiev score which most children will be at least slightly familiar with, but few will have much experience of watching a full orchestra, which is thrilling in itself.

The production is a fantastic feast of classical and modern choreography that is as original and witty as it is visually striking. The plot has been taken back to the original darkness of the fairytale to add an element of horror which delights children.

It is of course at heart a romantic tale but with plenty of decadence, bad behaviour and some frightful detail. Children used to modern takes on fairytales where an ending brings reconciliation will be thrilled by the brutal retribution meted out on the ugly sisters and the evil stepmother.

My nine-year-old son certainly thought this was the best bit and the costumes were punk enough to impress teen fashionistas. The dancing is simply breathtaking.

From the moment the orchestra struck up, heralding the incredibly athletic dancers bursting on to the stage, each of us was spellbound, and seeing such a production in a magnificent theatre just adds to the magic.

My children may not be sophisticated enough to stop referring to the interval as half time, but despite being bombarded with mediocre TV talent shows and virtual reality games like the rest of their generation, they know to be impressed with real talent when they see it.

Cinderella was at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow last month and opens on the 12th January at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, before touring Aberdeen, Inverness and Belfast.

Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 12-15 January, tickets from 11.50, box office, tel: [phone].

See www.scottishballet.co.uk for full details of prices and the tour.

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 1 January, 2011