‘Dracula’ — The Architecture of Performance

Dracula

Oregon Ballet Theatre
October 11th, 2025 – 2pm Matinee
Keller Auditorium, Portland, Oregon

Featuring Isaac Lee (Dracula), Kangmi Kim (Svetlana),
Bailey Shaw (Frederick), Zuzu Metzler (Flora),
and Giovanny Garibay (Renfield)

Music by Franz Liszt, in an arrangement by John Lanchbery,
Seattlemusic Orchestra conducted by Ermanno Florio

❖

Wearing my red coat, I passed Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Dracula poster on the way into Keller Auditorium.

It fluttered slightly near the trees outside, the Count’s red wings glowing behind glass. Reflected around it were the fall leaves and the Keller Fountain—ordinary Portland life appearing beside an image of a vampire ballet. Even before the performance began, it created a strange little overlap between the world outside and the one waiting inside.

Performance Perspectives:
The Calm Before the Curtain

Prior to the performance, an open company class was conducted onstage as part of the Performance Perspectives program.

The class revealed the physical preparation underlying the performance. Dancers worked through sequences of jumps, turns, and traveling combinations, accompanied by live piano. Instruction emphasized rapid memorization and adaptation, with new combinations introduced at short intervals. The focus extended beyond strength and technique to include timing, spatial awareness, and responsiveness to changing conditions.

Environmental factors were also addressed. Variations in stage surface, humidity, and atmospheric effects such as fog require adjustments in landing, balance, and movement quality. The class functioned as both physical preparation and calibration to the specific conditions of the Keller Auditorium stage.

The session concluded with controlled port de bras and formal bows, marking the transition from preparation to performance.

Performance Perspectives:
Staging and Technical Systems

A pre-show talk by historian Melanie Summers made that shift even more interesting. She spoke about the scale of the production: the large scenic pieces inspired by medieval woodcuts and German Expressionism, the more than seventy costumes moving in and out of use backstage, and the quick changes required as dancers shifted between village life and supernatural figures.

What stayed with me most was learning how much of the ballet’s magic depended on people working in real time behind the scenes.

The flying sequences, for instance, were not simply an effect that could be turned on at will. They relied on cables, counterweights, rigging, and a coordinated crew. Parts of that work could not be fully rehearsed away from the Keller stage. Before each act, the systems had to be checked and recalibrated for safety and precision.

It was described as “controlled chaos” backstage, which felt exactly right. A polished theatrical illusion depends on many people doing their jobs with such accuracy that the audience never has to see the work underneath it.

The Ballet Begins

Then the curtain rose.

Dracula moved between a village world and the Count’s castle, with the contrast made clear through light, costume, scenery, and movement. The castle scenes felt enclosed and shadowed, as though the dancers were moving inside a world already shaped by Dracula’s control. The village scenes opened outward, becoming brighter and more communal.

The contrast between Svetlana and Frederick was especially important. Their dancing had an ease and mutual balance to it, a sense of two people moving in time with one another. That relationship gave the ballet an emotional center before the darker forces of the story began to intrude.

The production did not rely on dialogue to explain itself. Instead, the choreography carried the story through shifts in atmosphere and physical control. In the castle, movement could become more restrained, repetitive, and enclosed. In the village, it opened into group dances and a more expansive feeling of shared life. When the darker world returned, that openness began to feel threatened.

By the final act, the spectacle had become more visible: flight, shadow, scenic movement, and the physical presence of Dracula’s world closing in around the characters. But because I had watched the open class and heard the pre-show talk, I found myself seeing the spectacle a little differently.

When dancers appeared to fly, I could still feel the hidden human coordination behind the illusion. When the stage filled with fog, I thought about the adjustments dancers had to make to their balance and movement. When a character emerged in another costume or the scenery transformed the space, I thought about the quick changes, crews, cables, and careful preparation happening just out of sight.

That knowledge did not make the ballet less magical. It made it more so.

The Count’s world depended on darkness, illusion, and control. Yet the production itself depended on something much more grounded: dancers, musicians, technicians, costumers, riggers, and crew members working together with extraordinary precision.

---

After the performance, I thought again about the poster outside Keller Auditorium. Behind its glass, Dracula’s red wings still glowed against the reflected trees and fountain. The image seemed to blur the boundary between the supernatural story I had just watched and the familiar Portland afternoon waiting beyond the theatre doors.

For a few hours, the ordinary world had made room for fog, shadows, flying figures, and a Count who seemed to command the stage.

And behind all of it was the quiet, disciplined work that made the illusion rise.

The production operates through the coordination of multiple systems: choreography, staging, lighting, costume, and mechanical design. Each element functions independently while contributing to a unified structure.

The performance does not rely on narrative explanation. It is organized through movement, spatial control, and repetition. The result is a work that is read through structure rather than dialogue.