{"id":14820,"date":"2017-10-18T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=14820"},"modified":"2017-10-26T10:17:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T17:17:15","slug":"ballet-performance-of-dracula-goes-beyond-the-gore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/10\/18\/ballet-performance-of-dracula-goes-beyond-the-gore\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballet performance of Dracula<\/em> goes beyond the gore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ballet Victoria artistic and executive director Paul Destrooper is quick to point out that the gorier side of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel Dracula<\/i> that Hollywood so lovingly dwells on is not the main focus of Ballet Victoria\u2019s performance of the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cDracula is much more than some monster, this vampire\u2014much more than some bad guy that bites people,\u201d says Destrooper. \u201cPeople aren\u2019t interested in these characters for those reasons. We are drawn in to Dracula by his promises of eternal life, eternal beauty. This is something that\u2019s super relevant, because now more than ever do we wish to be beautiful and young forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ballet Victoria\u2019s performance of Dracula<\/em> is something a bit different from the Hollywood movies (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Destrooper understands that there is some stigma surrounding the ballet, and that there is an idea out there that it\u2019s something exclusive and high-fashion. But he says that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure, a lot of people think ballet is old and dated, and that we\u2019re no longer relevant,\u201d he says. \u201cBut there are a lot of ballet companies, and we\u2019re one of them, that\u2019s bringing ballet back into this century, trying to make it relevant to today\u2019s audiences. So in terms of the well-known Nutcracker<\/i> cliche, it doesn\u2019t really apply to some of the newer companies. We still focus heavily on those traditions, the technique, but in the art we are trying to do newer, interesting things, since we have to speak to a more diverse audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Destrooper also says that companies like Ballet Victoria are taking old ballets and removing some of the things in them that he calls \u201chorrendously politically incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen ballet first started, we travelled around the world, took things from the Middle East and China, and mocked them,\u201d he says. \u201cLike in The Nutcracker<\/i>, we have the Arabian Dance and the Chinese Dance\u2014all of these things were like, \u2018Look what we\u2019ve brought from these far-away lands.\u2019 But they weren\u2019t honest; they were satirical. In The Nutcracker<\/i>, in the Chinese dance, where you squint and put your fingers up like chopsticks, it\u2019s unbelievable that [ballet companies] think it\u2019s still okay to do that. But now, we take these techniques and traditions, the stories like Giselle<\/i> or Swan Lake<\/i>, and we bring in today\u2019s more colourful, open mind to different cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if audience members aren\u2019t interested in dancing, Destrooper says that there\u2019s something for them at this performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, come for the music,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got this beautiful blend of Beethoven, Benedictine music, and also more modern composers like Tyler Bates. Sometimes I use the same composer for a performance, but this one is really a beautiful blend. It\u2019s entertaining and it flows right by. But if you already love ballet, or perhaps you yourself practice it in the more traditional fashion, there\u2019s a lot here you already know. But I want to draw everyone in with some of the more exotic things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dracula
\n<\/i>7:30 pm Friday, October 27\u00a0and Saturday, October 28
\n2 pm Sunday, October 29
\n$23.50 and up,\u00a0McPherson Playhouse
\nrmts.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ballet Victoria artistic and executive director Paul Destrooper is quick to point out that the gorier side of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel Dracula that Hollywood so lovingly dwells on is not the main focus of Ballet Victoria\u2019s performance of the story. \u201cDracula is much more than some monster, this vampire\u2014much more than some bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-october-18-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14823,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820\/revisions\/14823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}