Fri 10/30 @ 8PM
Along with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula lives near the apex of the gothic horror genre. Theatrical treatments of the Transylvanian count have long entranced audiences, but what promises to be a very compelling multi-media dramatization closely based on Stoker’s story and characters comes to the Akron Civic Theatre this Friday.
We called Bobby Wesner, the artistic director of Neos Dance Theatre and got the dirt on Count… the Legend of Dracula.
CoolCleveland: We’ve read the press kit, but what really got us excited was our memory of an outdoor Neos performance which included excerpts of your version of Dracula.
Bobby Wesner: That would have been years ago, a summer time performance. Maybe we did it in Akron for the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival.
CC: Akron sounds likely. It was just an excerpt from the entire ballet and you have apparently incorporated much more multi-media into the upcoming performance, right?
BW: Right. Now the entire backdrop is filled with – basically – a full-length movie. Even when it goes dark, the movie is still running and timed with the soundtrack so there are constantly images or animation or visual effects happening.
CC: And just to clarify, this is a full-length movie created especially to accompany Count… the Legend of Dracula?
BW: That’s right. We worked with a very, very fine visual effects artist, the Emmy award winner Andy Gardner from the Mansfield area, and he created a lot of it from scratch. He did some filming and took some photos but he also developed the animation pieces with software programing. We use the projections to clarify the story, which does have a lot of bounce back and forth between time frames, flashbacks and flash-forwards. Andy came up with a really smart way to help the audience travel with us wherever we’re going.
CC: Can you give us a for instance?
BW: One of the storytelling devices we use is a close-up of a locket that we see throughout the first portions of the ballet. Jonathan is traveling to Transylvania to make this real estate deal with Count Dracula and he looks at the locket and has this flashback to London with Mina, his fiancée. Then he drops the locket when he first encounters Dracula, and as Dracula looks at the locket, it appears on the screen and he revisits his great love of 500 years ago, Elizabetha. We see the backstory — Dracula and Elizabetha young and in love, dancing together — but she was brutally murdered and in avenging her death, the Count was placed under a curse and so became Dracula, searching for the reincarnation of his true love, Elizabetha, who has been reincarnated as Mina.
CC: Ahh! A backstory that does not appear in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
BW: Yes. This was one of the contributions of Michael Thomas, another Emmy award winner we’ve frequently collaborated with. For me, this gives more of a heart to who Dracula is. Ultimately there’s no forgiveness for all the murder and mayhem that he commits and he has to pay the penalty and die at the end, but it does pull at your heartstrings, especially during that flashback with the locket.
CC: That was one of my questions. How close do you stay to Bram Stoker’s original? You seem to keep the names of the familiar characters and the outline of the plot, but as you say, your writer has added this backstory. You know, as much as we revere the Bram Stoker original, if Dracula is wholly evil that’s a weakness in the original story.
BW: Yes, I really credit Michael for writing that in. I’ve coached the role and performed the role and I really enjoy that aspect of remembering what it was like to be human and struggling to find that again.
I can’t say enough about the work that Michael and Andy do, their dedication to excellence, the clarity with which they present their work, and how much fun it was to take those gems they gave me. They made my job really easy. I just had to come up with the steps.
CC: Speaking of your choreography and your performance of the role, I wanted to say how surprisingly effective you were as Dracula. You’re a very nice guy, Bobby, and your slim demeanor is anything but threatening, yet as Dracula, you choreographed and performed your interactions with the other characters so that you come off as overwhelmingly powerful and terribly dangerous. But who is performing the role of Dracula at the Civic?
BW: His name is José Soares and he is a guest artist from Lake Erie Ballet where I am the currently artist in eesidence. He’s dancing Dracula for their performances and is also coming down to Akron for our performances at the Civic.
At the Civic we’ll be marrying Dracula with a silent movie and I just think it’s the perfect pairing for a historical place that has kind of a haunt to it anyway — the silent film, the use of the mighty Wurlitzer, plus the fact that the ballet has a timeless feel to it. We use a lot of varied musical selections from very current to very old. Industrial rock to Bach.
CC: We’re told that the movie will be Danger Girl, a 22-minute Gloria Swanson short made in 1916.
BW: I think that the audience will enjoy the length of this movie. In a previous performance we showed Nosferatu (1922) and, as cool as it was to see how Dracula first appeared on film, it was quite long.
CC: So we first saw your Dracula years ago and you’ve done it a lot since, just not close to Cleveland.
BW: This is not our first full-length production, but it’s been by far our most successful. It’s had a lot of appeal and it’s served a lot of audiences. We’ve done it in many theaters around Ohio and even out of state. Newark, Ohio, west of Columbus, Findlay in western Ohio. Erie, Pennsylvania this season. Last year we toured it to Georgia.
CC: Usually we emphasize premieres but the fact that this piece has been performed so much outside the Akron/Cleveland area is a big plus. Not only are the dancers more familiar with their roles, but the technical crew has a chance to iron out what must be a complex multimedia production.
BW: Yeah, I believe that this is year five for touring this Dracula, and at this point, the show has its own legs. We put it up really fast when we performed it just last weekend at the Renaissance Theater in Mansfield. By the time we get to the Civic, we’ll have performed it three weekends in a row so the dancers will be really on top of it.
CC: We keep hoping to see more of Neos in Cleveland.
BW: That Cleveland market! You know, we’re pretty homegrown. Every market we’ve entered into we’ve had a family of supporters around us, whether it’s a relationship with the University of Akron or friends we have at the Civic. Cleveland’s a market that I’m definitely interested in but being a small company we have to take those steps cautiously. It was fun to go up there and perform in collaboration with Cleveland Ballet, but to do it on our own is a whole other cost level. Hopefully we’ll grow some legs of our own up there and get some supporters and sponsors and be able to do a show at the Ohio someday soon. Definitely one of our long term goals.
Tickets for Neos Dance Theatre’s Count… The Legend of Dracula are $27.50 reserved and $20 general admission. Go to akroncivic.com to order.
[Written by Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas]
Akron, OH 44308