Follow-up on the Dracula ballet

[bironic]

Found a few clips of the ballet on YouTube to give you a better sense of the performance than my description yesterday. It's of the same version (by Michael Pink), but not the cast or theater where we saw it. You can also see how much Pink mixed classical ballet with modern dance movements. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8vUtOfbbOg I'd recommend tuning in at 2:25 for Dracula's first appearance, followed by brides, followed by a glimpse of Dracula/Harker from ~4:20-5:13. You can see the second half of the bat-like descent at 7:27. Dracula slashes his breast for Mina to drink at 10:23, and then there's the crypt dance at 10:40ish. And the ending. The punch was somewhat pulled in ours, as the stake fell out of Dracula while he descended into the misty coffin!

I scanned for reviews of the ballet in any of the cities in which it has played (Milwaukee, Atlanta, D.C., etc.) that mentioned the homoerotic threat, but found only two. Brackets are mine:

Pink [the creator] notes that the novel is ''perfect for dance,'' because it focuses on ''all the unspoken things'' in its characters' repressions and relationships. Plus, ''Dracula himself is a man of very few words.'' Of course, still more appeal is found in the ''underlying homoerotic tension between'' the count and his first victim, a young, innocent Englishman. ''All of those are great things to tell in nonverbal theater.'' Metro Weekly

In Kim's hands [the dancer who sometimes plays Dracula but not when we saw it] — and legs, and blood-streaked pectorals — this all-too-familiar melodrama just got all sexypants. His Dracula hungers not only for blood but also for sadistic torment and omnisexual domination. But he’s a sensitive demon, too. When he kisses the hand of anemic solicitor Jonathan Harker (Jared Nelson in the thankless role of earnest victim) [who actually played Dracula in our performance; imagine the amount of rehearsing he's done!], the scent of flesh sends Kim into meditative raptures. Here is Dracula as a Byronic hero; his blood lust stems from an affliction of the senses. Is that so wrong? Washington Post

And now, back to work. I have a lot to say about this ballet! Happy to do so with any of you who want.

Comments

[isagel.livejournal.com]

This has nothing to do with this entry, but...

I'm close to finishing a Festivids treat vid (for some reason I'm making treats before my actual assignment, idk) in a fandom I suspect you know better than any of my other vidding friends. I'm waffling back and forth on whether I want to send it out for beta - on the one hand beta is good, but on the other I'm not sure I want to go through the inevitable phase of "omg everything about this sucks" over a random treat - but if I do decide on letting someone else take a look at it before I upload, would you want to be that someone? Obviously you shouldn't feel obliged to, and if you do want to look over the vid, you shouldn't feel like you have to give very detailed advice or anything. No need for it to be time consuming for you at all. :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I would be absolutely happy to. This week is going to be busy, but after that I should have plenty of time through January, should you decide you'd like a second opinion!