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Find some crushed velvet to wear if you’re going to Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Dracula at the Keller Auditorium this week. A rosary necklace, chunky combat boots, or just a line of thick black eyeliner would work in a pinch, too. Portland audiences understood their sartorial assignment at opening night Oct. 11 of OBT’s Dracula, a reboot of the gothic vampire tale that the ballet company first produced here in 2022.
The Keller lobby was dazzling, outshined only by the sets and costumes onstage. This is ballet at its most accessible, most crowd-pleasing and most eye-popping. Dracula (a magnetic and menacing Benjamin Simoens) flies high above the Keller stage with his bat wings at full extension, as do many of his ethereal “brides,” the harem of 18 undead ballerinas he keeps in waiting in his Transylvania castle. A chandelier explodes, vapor rolls over Dracula’s crypt, a convincing European village scene appears in Act II and two dancers act as horses pulling a real carriage. But despite all the razzle-dazzle, Dracula is also super dumbed-down, storywise.
Act I could easily be called “Vampire Foreplay,” Act II is “Virgin Villager Kidnapped,” and Act III is “Vampire Foreplay (with Villager).” That’s it! That’s the whole plot! (Attendees with early bedtimes and/or a lukewarm affection for the classical arts: Don’t panic when you open your playbill and see that there are three acts plus two 20-minute intermissions. The acts are 30 minutes each, so it’s a manageable amount of ballet.)
Ben Stevenson choreographed Dracula for the Houston Ballet in 1997, set to music by Franz Liszt, arranged by John Lanchbery and inspired by the 1897 Bram Stoker novel. It has been performed all over the country consistently over the past nearly 30 years—and also consistently been critiqued for its ho-hum choreography.
That’s pretty easy to forgive, though, when there’s so much else going on, especially all the flying. The story opens in the crypt of Count Dracula’s castle where his 18 brides are waking up for the night. Dracula controls the women with mere gestures, and their choreography includes lots of arms-forward zombie positioning, plus blank expressions. There’s not a lot for them to do, characterwise, but boy do they look gorgeous with their flowy white chiffon dresses catching the air just right and pooling all over the stage. It’s a beautiful femme counterpart to the hypermasculine imagery of the Count who is, of course, clad in black and red. Dracula is whipping up his sexual appetite, and the brides are competing for his attention.
A carriage arrives. Out steps a terrified, kidnapped young maiden from the village, Flora (Eva Burton). After a cat-and-mouse pas de deux with Dracula, the vampire eventually captures her and feeds on her in a suggestive conquest (it stays PG) on the floor at center stage.
Act II is visual candy, with dancers in bright, striped skirts doing a maypole dance with ribbons, while Dracula’s castle hovers ominously in the distant mountains. The OBT dancers are certainly doing the most with what they’ve been given, especially the villager Svetlana (Charlotte Nash). Nash played an undead bride in the 2022 production and has wisely been promoted to this more prominent role. Svetlana is bright-eyed and appears to have some actual agency. Her pas de deux with Frederick (John-Paul Simoens—brother of the dancer who plays Dracula) is a highlight of the ballet with some of the most impressive lifts.
The scene-stealer of the program is Renfield (Nicholas Sakai), Dracula’s henchman, charged with procuring more humans for the vampire to consume. Renfield is wild-eyed and wild-haired; he mimes eating a spider at one point. The character provides a welcome energetic shift on stage, not to mention some of the most stunning dancing, whirling like a dervish or doing gravity-defying toe-touches.
Renfield gives a hint, perhaps, of what the audience is missing in the rest of the choreography. Though not perfect, OBT’s Dracula is a worthy reason to pull on some crushed black velvet or rummage around for a dramatic lip color. It fits right into jack-o’-lantern, pumpkin spice latte, horror-movie season.
SEE IT: Dracula at the Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St. 503-222-5538, obt.org/event/dracula. 7:30 pm Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 17–18. $39–$178.
