BIG Live’s ‘Dracula’ is trashy ballet. Here’s why that’s a good thing

If theater and film can have both high and low art, why not ballet?

Plié purists might turn up their noses, both at the general concept and at BIG Live’s “Dracula,” whose run at ATG San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre opened Friday, July 3. But just as the musical “Shucked” hasn’t hurt Shakespeare, “Swan Lake” will survive its own shlocky, trashy third cousin. The art form is capacious enough for both, and maybe, just maybe, high and low can enrich each other.

But wait, you might protest: Low art doesn’t mean bad art, and some of the dancing, choreographed by Joel Burke, who also plays Jonathan Harker, is downright graceless. At times, Burke handles Abbey Hansen as his bride Mina like he’s heaving a sack of potatoes into the trunk of his car. Burke and Ervin Zagidullin as Dracula both repeatedly enter with Olympiad-high leaps, a stormcloud of appendages jabbing every which way.

It’s as if they know they’re on a musical theater stage, but the music’s recorded and there’s no singing, so they have to convey the confetti-cannon feeling through dance alone.

Other scenes in the production – which pares Bram Stoker’s incident-heavy novel to just these three main characters, among many other liberties – merely mark time. Crowd scenes convey a general prettiness, nothing more. Mina and Jonathan’s first pas de deux is set to Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” – a choice that suggests Googling “romantic piano song” and using one of the first result.

More Information

“Dracula”: BIG Live. Through July 12. $59.78-$231.80. Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., S.F. 888-811-5040. https://us.atgtickets.com

Over and over, Burke misses opportunities to use dance to establish basic rules of his world. Post-biting, it’s never clear to what extent Jonathan and Mina are hypnotized under Dracula’s thrall, captive to their own newfound bloodlust, and to what extent they still have free will. For his part, Dracula often seems tortured, collapsing into a fit of spasms, but if he’s supposed to pique our sympathy, “Twilight”-style, the production never develops that possibility.

Still, if you can’t figure out whether Dracula’s slave ghost brides (Janae Kerr, Giselle Osborne, Alyssa Park and Mia Zanardo) have any actual powers or their bites just stun for a moment and they’re mostly there to look creepy, the creepiness is the point. This “Dracula” is all about vibes – Dracula splaying his cape, bat-style, set to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on the organ, bite victims twitching into rigor mortis. When the slave ghost brides make the small, quick staccato steps of bourrée, weaving in and out from a formation as if they’re the interchangeable pieces of a shell game, your eyes might briefly deceive you: Were they somehow floating?

Call it ballet-qua-haunted house. And ATG San Francisco’s audiences came in-kind on opening night, sporting black lace, corsets, velour, brocade and, in at least a couple cases, a top hat and a waxed mustache.

For all its clumsiness, this “Dracula” does have two great dance insights. Our villain can only do ballet after he’s sated with blood; it’s how he manifests power and immortality. And once he bites someone, he acquires the power to puppeteer their movements, making his victims his mirrors on the dance floor.

A higher-art “Dracula” might have further explored these possibilities. But that version might not have found a way for a predator to attack from the air or make blood in a chalice emanate smoke. Nor might it let Dracula have his way with both Jonathan and Mina in his castle, like Dr. Frank-N-Furter with Brad and Janet. Ballet and “The Rocky Horror Show” haven’t been in the same sentence often enough; may BIG Live go on to bridge many more artistic horizons.

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This article originally published at BIG Live’s ‘Dracula’ is trashy ballet. Here’s why that’s a good thing.