BALLET GOES FOR THE THROAT

Nicolas Blanc sets Stoker in motion
to the hypnotic pulse of Philip Glass

Dracula has conquered the page, the screen and just about every other corner of popular culture. This Halloween, the Count is coming for ballet.

State Street Ballet gives him the full treatment in Dracula, a dark shadow, a newly commissioned, full-length ballet receiving its world premiere at Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre on October 30 and 31. Nicolas Blanc choreographs this latest encounter with Bram Stoker’s immortal vampire, with Tigran Sargsyan as Dracula and Maria Rita Rapisarda as Mina.

But this isn’t Stoker by the book. Blanc draws on both the novel and the many films that have transformed Dracula over the decades, streamlining characters and introducing his own theatrical inventions. There are undead creatures, haunting wolves, a ballroom sequence and passages that move away from straightforward storytelling into something more abstract. That sounds like fertile territory for dance: less explaining what Dracula is and more discovering what he might look like in motion.

Then there’s Philip Glass.

Glass composed his score for Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, in 1998, with Kronos Quartet performing the music. For Dracula, a dark shadow, Kronos returns to Glass’s brooding, hypnotic score, performing it live as Blanc transforms music originally created for film into the foundation for a new full-length ballet. The pairing of Glass’s insistent rhythms with Blanc’s neoclassical choreography should give this Dracula a pulse all its own.

Costume designer Ben-Oni Cortes is approaching Dracula from another unexpected direction. He describes his concept as “Victorian Fusion Haute Couture,” inspired in part by John Galliano’s Fall 2005 Dior collection. Victorian shapes meet transparency and modern construction in some 29 costumes designed to accommodate Blanc’s choreography. There are fangs, naturally, but also sculptural wolf heads and tails.

Rather than competing with all that visual detail, Jack Mehler takes a more restrained approach to the set and lighting, using line, shadow and a stripped-down environment to frame the dancers and Glass’s minimalist score.

There have been plenty of dancing Draculas before, but the ingredients assembled here make this one particularly intriguing: Blanc’s neoclassical choreography, Glass’s unmistakable score played live by Kronos, and a visual world that mixes Victorian Gothic with contemporary fashion. State Street Ballet isn’t simply transferring Stoker’s story to the ballet stage; Blanc is taking liberties with a character who has proved remarkably receptive to reinvention. With the premiere falling on Halloween weekend, the Count could hardly have chosen a better time to make his entrance.

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Dracula, a dark shadow
State Street Ballet
The Granada Theatre, 1214 State St. in Santa Barbara
Fri. at 7:30; Sat. at 2
ends on October 31, 2026
for tickets, visit State Street Ballet
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