"Dracula" presented by the Atlantic City Ballet Company
For a ballet company, the obvious holiday production comes at Christmas when The Nutcracker is performed around the country. But what about a Halloween ballet? Check around, there aren’t any. Well, there is one. Phyllis Papa and her Atlantic City Ballet are in their third year of presenting the completely original ballet Dracula. The company put on a production of the show last weekend at the Stockton Performing Arts Center and this weekend performs at the Paul W. Schmidtchen Theater at Lower Cape May Regional High School. If you’re wondering how the world’s most famous vampire became a ballet, you can look to Papa. “I had read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and I just felt it would make a good dance,” she says. “It fit really well, but each year I’ve changed and added to it. I’m constantly changing the music and we’ve added four new dances this year.” For some, the most surprising thing may not be that Dracula can be a ballet, but that Atlantic City even has a ballet. “It’s been a challenge to get people out to our productions,” Papa says. “Many times the people who come out have never seen a ballet. And I think they’re shocked, in a good way, by what they see. This is the first year we’ve played Stockton and we had a packed house. I think we blew them away.” This year’s production features a company of 18 dancers and 10 apprentices with professional dancers from throughout Europe, the U.S. and Asia. So if you like your blood suckers light on their feet, Dracula should hit the right vein. Performances are scheduled for 7:30pm Friday and Saturday. Visit acballet.org for information.
Backstage before, during and after a show is the most exciting place in the world. Adrenaline pumps everywhere, even through the observer, and that’s where I spent last Thursday, Oct. 27, as Phyllis Papa’s Atlantic City Ballet performed 'Dracula' in time for Halloween.
“I think for a lot of people it’s like a kickoff to the holiday season, and an event people enjoy going to see each year,” says the A.C. Ballet's Phyllis Papa, who employs 22 professional dancers in the production, many of whom come from, and were formally ballet trained in, other countries.
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