Dancing with Dracula

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This article was published 25/10/2016 (3446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ever since Bram Stoker first penned his 1897 Gothic thriller Dracula, horror buffs have shivered to the Irish novelist’s tale of the blood-sucking vampire who rises from his creepy crypt each night to haunt Victorian society.

But for Royal Winnipeg Ballet principal dancer Liang Xing, it’s also a tender story of the heart in which love conquers all. The Chinese-born artist, who turned 27 Monday, marks his deadly debut in the lead role Wednesday night.

The latest incarnation of the full-length story ballet, which the RWB premièred in 1998 and last staged in 2010, is choreographed by Montreal-based dance artist Mark Godden and runs until Sunday.

“It’s really, really touching,” Xing says over the phone from Minneapolis, during the company’s first stop on a five-city American tour. “Dracula is a very old man, but is still looking for love. When he finally finds it at the end, he dies.”

A former principal dancer with the National Ballet of China, the Beijing-born danseur noble first joined the RWB as a guest artist in 2013, arriving with his actress wife Ke Hu and infant daughter Vivian (a son, Vincent, was born last year) and landed his first RWB lead role as the Commander in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Lauded for his graceful lines and charismatic stage presence, the artist’s numerous accolades include a silver prize at the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 2009 and silver medal at the Shanghai International Ballet Competition in 2007.

Local balletomanes are used to seeing the lithe dancer in a host of regal roles, including Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, the Nutcracker Prince in Nutcracker, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and magical trickster Gordon in the RWB’s 2014 production Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation, another Godden work.

When asked if he’d rather play radiant princes or take a trip to the wild side with such notorious villains as “bite guy” Dracula — his pet nickname for the antihero — the soft-spoken artist offers a surprise.

“I prefer dark characters because there’s more you can do with the acting,” he says. “If you’re a prince, you’re just a prince, but if you’re Dracula, there are more layers and more drama. The emotional range is much wider.”

RWB artistic director André Lewis sings praises for Xing’s artistry.

“He’s tall, handsome and commanding. I especially love Liang in this role because he reminds me so much of Zhang Wei-Qiang (a.k.a. Johnny W. Chang, a former company dancer and its senior ballet master since 2010), who was the original Dracula and also came from China. (Liang) has that mystery about him, and is a perfect match,” he says.

Dracula ‘is just following his heart’

Portraying literature’s quintessential bad boy presents unique challenges, not least of which is navigating Godden’s physically demanding, theatrically charged choreography while whipping about an enormous velvety cape. He also has to strike the balance between crafting a compelling character that is fresh and believable, and one that borders on camp.

“The biggest challenge in performing Dracula is that you cannot show his energy, or his natural reaction to things because people will feel you are weak,” Xing says of his “less is more” interpretation, adding that his final, sensual pas de deux with the object of his desire, the guileless Mina, is his favourite section of the show.

“Dracula is very powerful, but keeping that energy inside you is what gives him his real power. And I can’t let the audience feel how hard the choreography is, as that will also make Dracula seem weak. I have to make every step look easy.”

And then there’s love — even 300-year-old vampires deserve a little bit of that which makes the world go around.

“Some people think Dracula is evil, but he has a story inside his body, and you have to let the audience feel that,” Xing says. “He’s a really, really old man, but he won’t give up on life because he begins to fall in love with Mina. He is just following his heart, which changes him.”

Dracula is also near and dear to the RWB’s heart for forging an ongoing artistic bond with Godden, a former company soloist and resident choreographer who created such other ballets as Svengali and Magic Flute. Lewis commissioned the thriller as the troupe’s first contemporary ballet — not to mention, Godden’s first full-length production — since Brian Macdonald’s Rose Latulippe in the 1960s.

Dracula, which is set to a sweeping orchestral score by Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, was also adapted as an award-winning film directed by Guy Maddin. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary was released in 2002.

“Having this ballet created was a major undertaking for us at the time,” Lewis recalls of the work that has consistently wowed audiences and earned rave reviews. “We were just coming back from a difficult deficit and we needed this kind of success. And Mark delivered in spades.”

“It’s a very dramatic ballet and the audience is going to love it,” he promises of its 2016 resurrection, which runs 131 minutes with intermission. “I know they’re going to sink their teeth into it and be absolutely mesmerized.”

holly.harris@shaw.ca