Letter from Scotland.

Scotland may be basking in the glow of its recently reconstituted Parliament and preparing to greet the millennium with a renewed sense of pride and cultural identity (not commodities the Scots have ever really been short of, to be honest), but the nation's cultural flag-bearers, and especially Scotland's dance companies, reveal a rather different story.

Financial issues continue to dominate the thinking of Scottish performing arts companies large and small. Of Scotland's four national performing arts companies--two orchestras, one opera, and one ballet company--only one, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, can be regarded as financially stable. The larger Royal Scottish National Orchestra is having a hard time convincing the Scottish Arts Council, its principal funder, that recent deficits are the result of outside forces, while the upside of Scottish Opera's relatively secure artistic and financial policies is more than matched by the downside of having to get into administrative bed with the ailing Scottish Ballet.

Charged by the Scottish Office to embark upon a cost-saving, `non-artistic' alliance with Scottish Opera, the Glasgow-based ballet company has limped along since the breakdown of orchestral merger talks between the opera and the ballet in the summer of 1997 forced the Scottish Arts Council to demand the resignation of the entire ballet board. This in turn provoked the departure of the ballet's artistic director, Galina Samsova. The company has since been without meaningful artistic direction and the new board has spent more than a year searching for a replacement--recently announced as Robert North, lately of Turin, Gothenburg, and Verona Ballets. But this appointment seems far from secure. At press time, dark rumblings of discontent about North's appointment were being heard from Scottish Opera, whose influential chief executive, Ruth Mackenzie, will head the joint services company. Will North show up, as scheduled, on September 1? It remains to be seen.

The effect of all this on company morale and audience figures has been telling. So telling, in fact, that not even Keith Cooper, the somewhat controversial former head of corporate affairs at the Royal Opera House, currently marketing Scottish Ballet, tries to put a glossy spin on things. "Classical dance is a bit in the doldrums right now --Christmas blockbusters apart," he says. "The public image of the art form across the country is largely colored by how people view the Royal Ballet and Scottish Ballet--not institutions that everyone is talking up. These are companies that have lost their way a bit and the knock-on effect is that people aren't terribly interested."

A gloomy picture, to be sure, but for the smaller players in Scotland's dance scene, there are shafts of light. In Glasgow, Nikki Milican's annual New Moves festival continues to showcase new talent on a tiny budget and to undersized audiences, yet with critical acclaim and a growing international profile. But with Tramway and CCA (both venues long associated with contemporary dance) being rebuilt, and the City Council taking public soundings about what sort of programming policy it should adopt, there is a very evident hiatus in Scotland's largest city as far as dance is concerned.

In Edinburgh, the outlook is much brighter. Dance Base, the city's hugely successful agency, recently announced it will open a new National Centre for Dance on a historic site next to Edinburgh Castle next year. Directed by Morag Deyes (and with Mark Morris as patron), Dance Base's policy of making full provision for community and social dance classes, as well as a safe haven for emerging choreographers, has produced some interesting discoveries. Among them, former Adventures in Motion Pictures dancer Ross Cooper and "street" groups Kultyer and FreshMess enliven the small Scottish independent dance scene.

From a very low base, a significant (and increasingly well-informed) audience for dance has blossomed in Edinburgh, thanks not only to the grassroots efforts of Dance Base, but the innovative programming policies of the Edinburgh International Festival. Under Brian McMaster's direction the festival has lately become a magnet for lovers of dance as well as of opera, theater and music. The festival's ongoing love-affair with Morris (though he is absent this year) and recent revelations like last year's Hans van Manen retrospective have drawn new audiences to dance in the capital. Cullberg Ballet and the work of Mats Ek (rarely performed in Britain) form the centerpiece of the festival's 1999 program (August 15 to September 4).