Scottish Ballet

Highland Fling is Matthew Bourne’s take on the classic ballet La Sylphide.

La Sylphide debuted in 1832 and shocked the ballet world by introducing it to The Romantics; a generation of young artists that revolutionised ballet with their distaste for reality and love of illusion.

La Sylphide was the first ballet to successfully express the Romantic philosophy: a hero on the brink of complacency, who suddenly throws it all away in a search for true happiness - a search that in the end proves fruitless.

James, a Scottish peasant, is about to marry a peasant girl named Effie. A Sylphide (a mythical winged sprite as difficult to hold as a dream) falls in love with James on his wedding day. She makes herself visible to him, and he falls in love with her and leaves his bride-to-be, relatives and wedding guests to escape with the Sylphide. James, a simple mortal, realizes that it is impossible to keep her at his side. Madge, the witch, sees James' conundrum and offers him a magic scarf which he must tie around the Sylphide's waist. This however will make her wings drop off leaving her unable to fly. James' hope of the Sylphide being his forever is shattered as she falls to the ground dead.