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Pennsylvania Ballet's "Dracula'
Transfusions needed
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Everybody’s favorite vampire is hanging from the Academy of Music rafters for Pennsylvania Ballet’s popular rendition of Ben Stevenson’s Dracula, created in 1997 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Bram Stoker novel that scandalized London. Those buttoned-up Victorians remain that way in Stevenson’s gothic pageantry.
All the action takes place around Castle Dracula and its nearby village, whose peasantry is suitably armed with garlic and crucifixes– until the harvest dance starts and lowers their guard. The score is a patchwork of music by Franz Liszt, with one famous dramatic signature— a menacing fanfare over a diabolical kettledrum.
The opening act finds Dracula skulking around the battlements (a lavish set designed by Thomas Boyd), bored with his 18 anemic wives, who look like silent film era Nosferatutu in ropey tresses and shredded gowns. They move in bloodless Busby Berkeley lines, occasionally flying around or recoiling under the Count’s raised hand. He tries to liven things up in a trio with two wives, but he just can’t sink his teeth into it. Dracula needs new dance partners, not to mention some fresh choreographic blood. His trusted bug-eating slave Renfield is dispatched to the village square, where a whole nest of female virgins hangs out en pointe.
‘I Love Lucy’ meets The Three Stooges
Happily for the audience, Stevenson provides a little more choreographic variation for the village divertissements. The Innkeeper and wife do a charming knock-off of the czardas dance from Swan Lake. But the women’s ribbon dance is so lacking in invention that the not only did the corps look bored, but the dancers were out of step à la Lucy Ricardo. The men had more to work with in the pugilistic pole dance, hitting the group double tour marks better than in previous years, but this number still scrambles them. The couples’ mazurka was ill paced but at least spirited.
Principals Amy Aldridge and James Ady, as the courting couple Svetlana and Frederick, are technically thrilling and invest character nuance to their lengthy pas de deux (also very derivative of Petita’s duets). Arantxa Ochoa as Flora, the peasant girl who has consummated a one-night stand with Dracula, turns up half-zombied in the square to create a distraction so Dracula can make off with Svetlana. Ochoa is a campy prima ballerina en pointe, showing the effects of a vampire bite. Later, as the new bride already cast aside, she is no less than spectral in a series of jêtés. Jonathan Stiles was equally cunning as Renfield, demonstrating impressive control and precision within his crazed leaps and contorted barrel rolls.
Men in tights to the rescue
Act III, in which Dracula tries to subdue the strong-willed Svetlana— dressed by the wives as his new virginal bride— is played out in a creepy duet of predator and victim. Ady may be wearing fuchsia tights, but that doesn’t mean he can’t rescue his beloved. The villagers storm the castle, provoking an amok action sequence worthy of the Three Stooges.
James Ihde does a lot of heavy lifting as Dracula, swooping around in his 30-pound cape while consummating his lounge-lizardly seductions. Stevenson doesn’t give him much to work with and doesn’t dare make his role any campier than it already is. Ihde breaks through in flashes, making sure that his turns and any actual dance combinations are well executed, and his predator-prey duets are erotically charged. In the second cast, Zachary Hench is more animated in the part; in fact, he has been Pennsylvania Ballet’s most sexually menacing Dracula so far.
No matter: Whatever the deficiencies in Stevenson’s choreography, they were lost on the audience, which lapped up this performance like vampires in a blood bank.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Everybody’s favorite vampire is hanging from the Academy of Music rafters for Pennsylvania Ballet’s popular rendition of Ben Stevenson’s Dracula, created in 1997 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Bram Stoker novel that scandalized London. Those buttoned-up Victorians remain that way in Stevenson’s gothic pageantry.
All the action takes place around Castle Dracula and its nearby village, whose peasantry is suitably armed with garlic and crucifixes– until the harvest dance starts and lowers their guard. The score is a patchwork of music by Franz Liszt, with one famous dramatic signature— a menacing fanfare over a diabolical kettledrum.
The opening act finds Dracula skulking around the battlements (a lavish set designed by Thomas Boyd), bored with his 18 anemic wives, who look like silent film era Nosferatutu in ropey tresses and shredded gowns. They move in bloodless Busby Berkeley lines, occasionally flying around or recoiling under the Count’s raised hand. He tries to liven things up in a trio with two wives, but he just can’t sink his teeth into it. Dracula needs new dance partners, not to mention some fresh choreographic blood. His trusted bug-eating slave Renfield is dispatched to the village square, where a whole nest of female virgins hangs out en pointe.
‘I Love Lucy’ meets The Three Stooges
Happily for the audience, Stevenson provides a little more choreographic variation for the village divertissements. The Innkeeper and wife do a charming knock-off of the czardas dance from Swan Lake. But the women’s ribbon dance is so lacking in invention that the not only did the corps look bored, but the dancers were out of step à la Lucy Ricardo. The men had more to work with in the pugilistic pole dance, hitting the group double tour marks better than in previous years, but this number still scrambles them. The couples’ mazurka was ill paced but at least spirited.
Principals Amy Aldridge and James Ady, as the courting couple Svetlana and Frederick, are technically thrilling and invest character nuance to their lengthy pas de deux (also very derivative of Petita’s duets). Arantxa Ochoa as Flora, the peasant girl who has consummated a one-night stand with Dracula, turns up half-zombied in the square to create a distraction so Dracula can make off with Svetlana. Ochoa is a campy prima ballerina en pointe, showing the effects of a vampire bite. Later, as the new bride already cast aside, she is no less than spectral in a series of jêtés. Jonathan Stiles was equally cunning as Renfield, demonstrating impressive control and precision within his crazed leaps and contorted barrel rolls.
Men in tights to the rescue
Act III, in which Dracula tries to subdue the strong-willed Svetlana— dressed by the wives as his new virginal bride— is played out in a creepy duet of predator and victim. Ady may be wearing fuchsia tights, but that doesn’t mean he can’t rescue his beloved. The villagers storm the castle, provoking an amok action sequence worthy of the Three Stooges.
James Ihde does a lot of heavy lifting as Dracula, swooping around in his 30-pound cape while consummating his lounge-lizardly seductions. Stevenson doesn’t give him much to work with and doesn’t dare make his role any campier than it already is. Ihde breaks through in flashes, making sure that his turns and any actual dance combinations are well executed, and his predator-prey duets are erotically charged. In the second cast, Zachary Hench is more animated in the part; in fact, he has been Pennsylvania Ballet’s most sexually menacing Dracula so far.
No matter: Whatever the deficiencies in Stevenson’s choreography, they were lost on the audience, which lapped up this performance like vampires in a blood bank.
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