Dracula kicks off the Aiken Civic Ballet’s 2019-2020 season with a dark, thrilling ballet perfect for Halloween.
The ballet, inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic horror novel, tells a dark love story. Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania on business—he’s supposed to meet with a nobleman named Count Dracula to help him buy three houses in London. Count Dracula is an undead, centuries-old vampire and a Transylvanian nobleman, who inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass. He is handsome and charismatic, with aristocratic charm. Harker is having a great trip until he realizes that the Count isn’t quite human, and shares the castle with three undead women who want to suck his blood. Dissatisfied with his undead brides, Count Dracula fixates on Mina, Harker’s wife, creating a dangerous love triangle.
In some areas of Transylvania, and Romania in general, superstition and rituals associated with mourning the dead are very complex, the belief in undead spirits, not at rest, date back centuries.
In the novel Dracula, Jonathan Harker remarks: “I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool.”
“It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?”
Vampire lore has existed for centuries, the character Bram Stoker created has become the standard in pop culture and artistic interpretations around the world.
Aiken resident and author Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great-grand nephew, spent a great deal of time in Romania, helping tourism guides direct people to visit the sites of the real Vlad Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) fictionalized as Count Dracula the vampire.
Not too many Romanians are happy their hero was turned into a blood-sucking villain,” said Dacre.
Though “Dracula” was set in Transylvania, Bram Stoker never visited the area. He wrote the historic novel entirely from England from his intense research on the region. Bram saw a sketch of Bran Castle and used it to describe Dracula’s castle. “The castle is magnificent and worth the trip to see,” said Dacre.
Dacre joined the cast of the Aiken Civic Ballet during last year’s performance as a partygoer and pallbearer. Dracula has inspired many plays, movies and dance performances since it was first written. “It very special to be on stage with the dancers,” said Stoker. “During his lifetime, Bram was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving, and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned,” said Dacre. “I think he would have loved to watch a ballet based on his novel.” Dacre is also the co-author, with Ian Holt, of “Dracula: The Un-Dead,” and in 2018, he released ‘’Dracul,” a prequel to Dracula which he wrote alongside J.D. Barker.
The ballet’s three distinct scenes – the village, Castle Dracula and Lucy’s funeral – and 59 costumes, which vary from simple bat wings to complex bodices with tutus. Most elaborate are Dracula’s brides, wearing tattered, beaded wed-ding gowns, streaked with the dirt of the grave and adorned according to the era they became vampires. Dark creatures and spiders crawl from every crevice on-to the stage along side wolves and young vampire girls. A cauldron of tiny bats swarm across the stage — leaving you with goosebumps — as their high-pitched screeches and eerie music announce Dracula’s awaking from his crypt.
“The dancing has teeth, and so do our dancers. There are some little toothy parts, where Dracula bites (the character of) Lucy Westenra and then she turns into a vampire,” said Norbert Nirewicz, who plays the title role and also is the choreographer. “This is a family-friendly show, so it’s not too terribly scary,” said Nirewicz.
Nirewicz, a Polish-born dancer, who has danced with companies including the Polish National Theatre, Ballet Classica de Camara in Venezuela and the Columbia City Ballet in Columbia, S.C., said he also choreographed the production for the Roanoke Ballet Theatre in Roanoke, Va., four years ago.
“This is an easy ballet to watch. There’s a lot more acting, versus pointe work and choreographed variations performed in a traditional production,” said Nirewicz, who adapted the choreography for use in Aiken to include added parts such as bats and spiders for the Aiken Civic Ballet’s younger dancers. “The Aiken community is one of the best I’ve worked with hands down,” said Nirewicz.
Performance dates are Friday, October 18, and Saturday, October 19, 7 p.m., at USC Aiken’s Etherredge Center. To purchase tickets for “Dracula,” call the Etherredge Center 803-641-3305. For more information about the Aiken Civic Ballet, visit aikenballet.org or send an email to aikencivicballet@gmail.com.
Photography by AP Gouge Photography
by Susie Ferrara
A native of Aiken, Susie studied under the direction of Carl Crosby and is a former member of the Aiken Civic Ballet Company. She also danced with the University of South Carolina Dance Company, under the direction Susan Anderson, and the Robert Ivey Ballet Company in Charleston, SC. She has 30 years of experience in Communications and Journalism, and currently works in the Site Training Department at the Savannah River Site.
