Dancers on the ball

Goal is a dance piece that is inspired by football. Actually, it's inspired - and driven - by choreographer Kerri Jeffrey's passion for the game. Since childhood, when her father began taking her along with him to matches, she's been a committed Hibernian supporter. If Goal were to bring in loads of money she'd invest it in Hibs - after settling the choice overdraft the show has so far entailed.

''Both Susan (Crowther, the producer) and I are in incredible debt,'' she tells me, with typically cheerful candour. ''But we were both determined to carry on, make the show happen, because we both believe in it so much.'' And you find yourself thinking: if only someone could distil and bottle Kerri's spirit - her optimism, her grit, her single-mindedness, her stamina - then give it, by the pint, to Scotland's World Cup squad . . .

It's close on two years, now, since Kerri first put her ideas about GOAL into action.

In August 1996, she choreographed a 45-minute piece about football for an Edinburgh youth group - all of them girls, by the way. She kept thinking that the whole concept could, should, be taken further. So, too, did Susan Crowther, a former member of Scottish Ballet who'd gone on to become the company's dance artist based in Edinburgh. Susan saw a video of the piece and was so impressed with its potential that, two months later, she came on board as GOAL's producer.

Since then, it's been a long haul to get the funding, and the right personnel, in place. ''It was really important for us to get everything happening before the World Cup,'' explains Kerri.

''We needed to use that interest to draw attention to what we were trying to do. And yes, a lot of people will see it as a kind of Tap Dogs or Riverdance thing but we've always wanted GOAL to be more than that. We see it as breaking down barriers between sport and arts. Getting the football fans to see dance in a slightly different way - and maybe getting the public to see football in a slightly different way, too.''

Scotland manager Craig Brown certainly seconds that

latter aim. He's on record as describing GOAL as ''a fresh and innovative approach to promoting the game''. Kerri herself has encouraging proof that the former ideal may also be achievable. She and company member Donny McNamara (yes, brother of that famous footballer Jackie!) have been doing outreach and education projects, going into schools and focusing, particularly, on boys who are football daft but reckon real men don't dance.

''We go in,'' she tells me, ''and at the start of the workshop we ask how many of them are interested in dance. No hands go up! But then we get them to do football moves. We put that to music, do it in slow motion . . . And they're dancing. But they don't realise they're dancing! By the end of the workshop they think it's fantastic. They'll never scoff at men dancing again. Which is the whole point.''

It's this crossover between the movement of field-play and the technique of contemporary dance which Kerri has choreographed into the stage show. Dancers who turned up for

the auditions in Glasgow

and London found themselves subsequently taking part in a football training session led by a professional coach.

''We had to see how they moved with a ball,'' explains Kerri. ''Because that's part of where the choreography comes from. For some sections we

did, actually, start off with footballs and then eliminated the ball and tried to retain the movement. The hardest thing about the whole process is - they're not 'dancing'.

They have to forget they're dancers. Think, instead, about what they're doing, where the ball would be, where they'd be looking. Think about the ball - not about the movement. And yes, it is hard. At times, they've turned it into a dance step. Which just doesn't work. It just looks so naff.''

She talks with such feeling for the game that, automatically, you just assume she's a player herself. That maybe the one woman in the GOAL line-up - Kiwi dancer Claire Luiten, who's team captain - is the Kerri figure! But no: ''I've never been able to play football, ever. I'm rubbish at it. My biggest dream would be to be able to control the ball the way a footballer can, but it just doesn't happen for me.

''But I know how it feels to be a fan, and what it feels like to have power over the players. Because you can affect what happens on the pitch. It's a popular football cliche that the crowd is the 12th player - and that's also something that I wanted to bring in, as part of GOAL . . . That relationship between fans and players, the whole identity thing of being a supporter, of believing in your team, feeling yourself part of that team.''

Though every waking moment has been taken up with getting GOAL off the ground, Kerri has missed only three Hibs games this season . . . ''All for GOAL reasons,'' she says. You can hear the mix of pride, excitement, apprehension, in her voice as she talks of how, at last, GOAL has become a reality and, as she looks forward - to tonight's debut at the SECC, to London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on Saturday, where they will be the headline act at a United Nations of Football celebration on the South Bank, to the Fringe and beyond. She has high hopes that, whatever happens to Scotland in the World Cup, GOAL will be a winner with audiences everywhere.

After this, I ask her, what next? Having seen her working with the dancers, egging them on, maybe she'd fancy taking over the running of the Scotland team? ''Only if I get some private moments with John Collins in the dressing room,'' she says, with a mischievous laugh. ''I wouldn't mind giving him a sponge down.''