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cb:dracula_oct_15_2010 [2010/10/15 23:03] – created tomgeecb:dracula_oct_15_2010 [2010/11/01 12:30] (current) – tomgee
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 +We attended the Friday evening Oct 15, 2010 performance and had balcony seats in the front row. The program was very enjoyable, I thought it was one of the best ever. The storytelling aspect of it made it hard to believe we were seeing a ballet. I especially liked Dracula, Libbie liked the first piece which was the Edgar Allen Poe "Masque of the Red Death".
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 +A scanned program is after the following stories.
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 Perhaps bloodletting and sex will do the trick, along with the company's call for audiences to wear costumes at the final performances on Halloween weekend.  Perhaps bloodletting and sex will do the trick, along with the company's call for audiences to wear costumes at the final performances on Halloween weekend. 
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 +===== Ghouls are afoot at Carolina Ballet =====
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 +//Marin Boieru, Alan Campbell, Ashley Hathaway, and Attila Bongar in Carolina Ballet's 'Dracula.' It's paired with a production of Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death' at Carolina Ballet.//\\
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 +Published Sat, Oct 16, 2010 02:00 AM
 +Modified Fri, Oct 15, 2010 09:37 PM
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 + RALEIGH Carolina Ballet's Halloween-season program of new works based on classics of the macabre emphasizes the visual and the dramatic. Enhanced by cutting-edge technology and original scores, both pieces are geared to audiences beyond core dance fans.
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 +In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," a prince celebrates six months of avoiding the plague by throwing a lavish masked ball. The desperate merrymakers take little notice of a skull-masked figure, but when the prince demands the stranger's unmasking, it's Death himself come for them all.
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 +Robert Weiss' half-hour version depicts the ball up to midnight, each hour danced in a different room, effectively represented by projections of varying decorations onto a wall of arches and stairways. David Heuvel's dazzling commedia dell'arte costumes add richness to Weiss' often angular and somber choreography, signaling the pall hanging over the festivities. J. Mark Scearce's score adroitly mixes courtly formality with melodic melancholy.
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 +Timour Bourtasenkov's prince and Melissa Podcasy's duchess communicate the pair's kinkiness, while of the guests, Eugene Barnes and Lara O'Brian's acrobatically sensuous Arabian prince and princess are the most distinctive. Gabor Kapin makes Death's spins and leaps properly menacing.
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 +Broadway and movie choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett has teamed with projection artist Adam Larsen to give a cinematic sweep to her hourlong condensation of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula," a London street dissolving into an asylum cell or moonlit graveyard instantaneously, while nightmare shadows of bats and storm clouds play over them. She also employs classic stage tricks for disappearances and optical illusions, aided by Ross Kolman's spooky lighting and Jeff A. R. Jones' panels, drops and castle set.
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 +Taylor-Corbett frames the story with narration by Dr. Seward, concentrating on Dracula's interaction with two women. Thursday's pairing of Marcelo Martinez's darkly handsome vampire with Lilyan Vigo's ethereal Lucy and Margaret Severin-Hansen's plucky Mina were the evening's highlights in their frankly sexual pas de deux. Alan Campbell gave Seward effective gravity and Yevgeny Shlapko's manic, fly-eating Renfield was a riveting example of acting through dance.
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 +In attempting to include all the iconic moments in the novel, however, Taylor-Corbett asks for many elaborate setups that on Thursday made the staging rushed and clumsy. The many short scenes also give Scearce's appropriately atmospheric score few opportunities to flow and expand.
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 +Still, the theatrically dramatic production holds the attention and is a satisfying example of how ballet can be stretched beyond its stereotype. 
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 +We also attended the Oct 30 Halloween Eve performance with the Benziger. We had a pre performance talk by the composer of the ballet music. He was quite a dynamic person and explained the large percussion section and the Hawaiian sticks used by the orchestra at one point in the ballet. We had box seats on the side which only had a 2/3 stage view. The cast was better than the earlier performance but the earlier performance was just as enjoyable.\\
 +The Oct 30 cast:\\
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cb/dracula_oct_15_2010.1287198215.txt.gz · Last modified: 2010/10/15 23:03 by tomgee