Email
The dark passion of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” pours through Patricia Dickinson Wells’ original choreographed two-act ballet, “Dracula, A Love Story.”
Although the love that the blood-starved Dracula expresses is a little creepy and extremely obsessive over four centuries, Dickinson Wells says the Festival Ballet Albuquerque production isn’t as much terrifying as it is passionate.
“It’s a story of love and redemption. It’s the ultimate love story. A twisted ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that stands for more than four centuries,” she says. “I don’t want to stop those who love bloodsuckers from coming, but there isn’t much blood. If it’s scary, it’s because the music and the acting are powerful and heighten the passion and the tension.”
 |
||
|
If you go WHAT: “Dracula, A Love Story” WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19, and Saturday, Oct. 20, and 2 p.m. Oct. 21 WHERE: National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth SW HOW MUCH: $13-$37 at Dance Theatre Southwest, 4200 Wyoming NE, 296-9465 and at the NHCC box office. Visit festivalballetabq.org for more details |
|
|
Even after getting his custom vampire fangs fitted from The Tooth Factory, an Albuquerque dental laboratory, Dominic Guerra, who plays Dracula in this year’s production, says he hopes the audience comes to appreciate, if not love, his character as he does.
“I feel like I am Dracula when I am performing,” he says. “Inside, he’s not as mature as his 400 years would seem. He’s involved in the passion of love and not the intimacy of it. The passion can drive you crazy, but the intimacy carries you through.”
As the ballet opens, Dracula has returned home in the 1400s to Transylvania from a holy war to learn that his beloved wife has killed herself when his enemies told her Dracula was dead.
“He’s very emotional. He has a breakdown that he can’t come back from. He’s committed a wrong that he can’t right. He feels like he went to war for his religion and now his Lord has let him down. He stabs the altar and drinks the blood. He’s way off. Dracula isn’t rational,” Guerra explains. “My real struggle is with Mina (a woman he meets in 1897 who Dracula believes is his reincarnated wife). Do I make her into a vampire?”
Guerra, an Albuquerque native, has returned from New York City, where he was a professional company member and principal dancer with the with American Repertory Ballet after completing a three-year scholarship with the Alvin Ailey School of Dance.
He says he will bring all of his years of dancing as well as his professional technique and discipline to the role of Dracula to help the audience understand his love and torment through movement, instead of words.
“When I dance I like to find the story. My body is trained with this ballet vocabulary and this modern (dance) vocabulary. I’ve worked so hard to learn this, to be good, that the discipline allows me the freedom to express myself,” he explains. “I hope the audience will be whisked away with me and follow me through this story.”
Dickinson Wells says it’s the story that keeps her motivated to stage “Dracula” again after its premiere in 1999 and the handful of productions that have followed.
The 2012 production is dedicated to the memory of her friend and colleague, Michel Barteau, who played the original Dracula and collaborated on parts of the choreography.
Each production changes. She creates new choreography to feature the strengths of the performers each time.
“This is a totally new ‘Dracula.’ It’s close to my heart,” she says. “You can make any story into a ballet. It’s all in the telling.”
