Q Magazine | Ballet West's 'Dracula' bleeds erotic despair
At Halloween, we’ve each been Dracula. With a white tux shirt, black cape, and blood-dripping fangs.
There have been different versions of Dracula, from Béla Lugosi’s to Francis Ford Coppola’s to Nosferatu. There’s an adaptation to add to the list: Ballet West’s. And it’s decidedly not a delicate fairytale of tutu-clad princesses.
Ballet legend Ben Stevenson choreographed a stage production in 1997 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Bram Stoker’s seminal novel. “Dracula” is a full-length staging of the vampire’s supernatural seduction with an impossible-to-satisfy appetite for blood and women.
You don’t need to know anything about ballet to join Ballet West fans. If you’ve ever been seduced, obsessed, jealous, horny, or dramatically wounded, you understand the vocabulary. There’s eroticism, sexual desire outside typical social boundaries. And beautiful men in tights. Enough camp to possibly rival the sweet transvestite from Transylvania.
The famed company has staged “Dracula” before, to wide acclaim. Aficionados see how, through dance, music, and the expressive human body, the production transforms the familiar gothic story into a darkly sensual theatrical experience.
Requiring at least 50 dancers, only a handful of companies attempt “Dracula.” And technical dancing and theatrical stagecraft that most companies can’t pull off.
Notably, the choreographer was directly associated with Margot Fonteyn, has worked with John Travolta, Elton John, and Chita Rivera, and was friends with Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland.
You may find the ballet to be one of the most revealing of previous “Draculas.”