Bloodsucker

A dress made of lava caps off fashion designer Drascula‘s final Fashion Week: Dark rock flows over glowing light, while all around crinolines of flame swirl. The Karlsruhe State Ballet’s Dracula is pure spectacle—a total work of art combining runway fashion, highly emotional music, surreal projections, veiled curtains, light, smoke, and impressively composed tableaux, in which Kenneth Tindall’s choreography plays one of several roles. This reinterpretation of Bram Stoker’s famous vampire novel, which Tindall transposes into the world of fashion, revels in dark, sensual chic; there is even a fragrance inspired by the ballet, sold at the theater. The glossy spectacle looks magnificent on the large stage in Karlsruhe, but seems almost a little shameless in comparison to Neumeier’s gravitas, ...