The Utah Review | Brilliantly phantasmagorical, Ballet West’s Dracula is blockbuster 63rd season opener
Ballet West has performed many enchanting, delicately choreographed storybook ballets with great success. Meanwhile, Ben Stevenson’s Dracula truly allows the company to flex their artistic muscles in a contemporary theatrical vein where many wraithlike characters demand intricate revealing choreographic flourishes which not have been usually seen since the likes of silent film classics such as Nosferatu.
Stevenson created the ballet 30 years ago to coincide with the centennial of the publication of Bram Stoker‘s famous Gothic novel. While the ballet is reminiscent of 19th century classics (notably Coppelia), Stevenson’s Dracula effectively compacts the loosely adapted narrative in a neo-Romantic framework. As Adam Sklute, Ballet West artistic director, explained in a note, “This is not too dissimilar to how Bram Stoker himself borrowed from other famous Gothic horror stories to create his novel.”