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2010 Version Of Dracula


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I attended the opening night's performance of Dracula. I don't like to attend opening nights because the later performances are almost better, but there are circumstances beyond my control that are limiting my options.

Anyway, the performance was pretty good, but it was easy to tell which dancers had danced their parts in previous years. We got the 'A' cast, with principles Sharon Wehner as Mina Harker, Maria Mosina as Lucy, Igor Vassine as Dracula, and Alexei Tyukov as Lucy's fiance, along with soloists Viacheslav Buchkovskiy as Jonathan Harker and Jesse Marks as Renfield. Retired principle dancer Gregory Gonzalez returned again to play Dr. Van Helsing. This was the first year that Maria Mosina has been cast for the most part as Lucy (in past years she had only played Lucy in the final performance), so she was able to add more development to that role. Since 2 of the most important dances in the ballet are duets between Dracula and Lucy, this casting meant that these very important parts were performed by dancers who have been paired together regularly for about a decade. IMHO, they were able to step these dances up a notch over what had been done in previous years.

The down side, besides that I didn't get much sleep the night before and couldn't get into the performance the way that I could if I was more rested, was the audience. It was by far the worst audience at any serious performance (by that I mean besides movies and rock concerts) that I've ever attended. LOTS of people talking during the performance (I finally told the 20-something women in the row in front of me that if they had only come to talk they could do it in lobby). LOTS of people returning late from the intermissions (with 2 20-minute intermissions, there was plenty of time to take care of anything that needed to be taken care of). And an unfortunate elderly man who was sitting in the center of one of the front rows who took ill, tried to leave during the middle of the last scene of the first act, and collapsed in the aisle. Probably not his fault, but it ruined one of the most powerful parts of the ballet.

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