Northern Ballet: Dracula review – lashings of gothic coupling

In his production of Dracula for Northern Ballet, choreographer-director David Nixon gives us the vampire as hard-bodied sex symbol. Indeed, our first sight of Dracula (Javier Torres) is when he climbs, stark naked, from his coffin. Elsewhere, wringing every last nuance of erotic metaphor from Bram Stoker’s text, Nixon gives us lashings of gothic coupling to a sinister Schnittke score. This is not a ballet which gives you time for reflection; it cracks through the story at breakneck pace, cutting from scene to scene with cinematic fluency.

Joseph Taylor is Jonathan Harker, engaged to Mina (Dreda Blow), but decidedly bite-curious in his encounters with the Count and his toothsome brides. Mina’s demure deportment contrasts with that of the foxy Lucy Westenra (Antoinette Brooks-Daw) whose duets with Dracula elicit Nixon’s most vivid choreography. In the first of these we see Lucy’s thighs shuddering with ecstasy as her undead lover thrusts at her, and as her nature changes over the course of Act 1, her body language becomes increasingly hectic and disordered. The pair’s final encounter – a real tour de force by Nixon, suggestive of fabulously nasty sex – leaves her dead on her bed, legs splayed, exsanguinated.

Brooks-Daw goes at her part with splendid, lubricious elan, but Torres is too wholesome to be entirely convincing. He lacks the aura of ancient corruption with which Stoker endows his villain (and which Jonathan Goddard so memorably brought to the role in Mark Bruce’s recent Dracula production). Pre-Twilight and similar vanilla maunderings, the essence of the vampire’s appeal was his inhuman cruelty and perversity. Part-humanised, as here, he is disempowered.

That said, this is a highly entertaining piece of work, and those in search of heaving bosoms, unlaced bodices and neck-biting will not leave disappointed. The company are in fine dramatic form. Blow manages Mina’s transformation from dutiful fiancee to snarling monster with high style, and Isaac Lee-Baker despatches the role of Arthur Holmwood with eye-catching elegance. For Hammer Horror fans, Nixon’s production will be a homecoming.