DANCE

Dracula

State Theatre until September 12

Newcastle Civic Theatre September 17 to 21

Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN

★★★

The audience was in full Gothic dress-up at Sydney’s opening night of Dracula by BIG Live. Spurning the traditional ballet company structure in favour of a fully privately funded show-based business model (more akin to musical theatre), BIG is currently the new kid on the dance company block.

You have to admire its entrepreneurial spirit. Though BIG blurs the line between ballet as a classical artform and ballet recast as popular entertainment for business, its performances are mostly sold out. Clearly, it has reached audiences typical classical dance companies have not.

The choreography tells a sufficient if unchallenging ballet-as-popular-entertainment story.

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