There is something fitting about watching a story of obsession and immortality unfold inside a theatre that has been seducing Melbourne audiences for 140 years. On opening night of BIG Live’s Dracula: Ballet at its Darkest, the red carpet outside Her Majesty’s Theatre set the tone before a single dancer had taken the stage. Flashbulbs, black tulle, a crowd that had clearly dressed for the occasion. Inside, the production more than lived up to the anticipation.
Her Majesty’s Theatre on Exhibition Street is one of Melbourne’s grand old dames of live performance, marking its 140th anniversary this year. Its ornate proscenium and intimate sightlines make it an ideal home for a work built on close, charged physicality rather than sprawling spectacle, and the venue’s return to hosting BIG Live for this season felt like a genuine homecoming for both company and city. Every seat in the house seemed close enough to catch the dancers’ breath, which matters enormously for a piece this physically demanding.
Artistic Director and choreographer Joel Burke doubles as Jonathan Harker, and it shows in how completely he inhabits the role. His solos carry real emotional weight, and by Act Two his performance folds guilt, grief and hunger into a single, taut physical language as Harker is pulled toward becoming the thing he fears most.
As Count Dracula, Ervin Zagidullin is magnetic. His leaps have a suspended, almost weightless quality that makes his four hundred years of menace feel entirely plausible. He commands the stage the moment he appears, and never lets go of it.
The ensemble deserves just as much credit, particularly the quartet dancing the Ghosts, often referred to as the Brides of Dracula, a spectral reimagining of Stoker’s original trio expanded into four. Draped in white and moving with an eerie, floating quality, they serve as both chorus and threat, Dracula’s collected victims from centuries past who close ranks around Jonathan and Mina whenever the danger sharpens. They move as one uncanny body, and by Act Two their choreography turns genuinely predatory.
Abbey Hansen‘s Mina is the emotional spine of the production. She moves from wide eyed innocence to something far more dangerous with total control, and her technical precision never wavers, not even through the demanding extended pas de deux with Dracula that anchors the second act. The ensemble deserves equal credit too, particularly the quartet dancing the Ghosts, Dracula’s collected victims from centuries past, who move as one uncanny body across the stage.
Act One:Moments That Set the Trap
The prologue. Before Jonathan and Mina ever appear, we see Vlad the Impaler at war, and the devastating loss of his wife that curdles into the immortal creature we meet later. It is wordless, but the storytelling is unmistakable, and it frames everything that follows in tragedy rather than simple horror.
Dracula’s first entrance. When Zagidullin finally steps into the light, the shift in the room is physical. The choreography holds him back just long enough that his arrival feels earned, and the ensemble’s reaction around him does as much storytelling as his own movement.
Jonathan and Mina’s idyll, interrupted. The tenderness Burke and Hansen build together in their early duet makes the Ghosts’ arrival, drawing the couple into Dracula’s orbit, land with real menace. You can feel the ground shift under the relationship in real time.
Act Two: Moments That Close the Jaw
The Mina and Dracula pas de deux. This is the technical and emotional centrepiece of the evening. Hansen’s control through the lifts and extensions is extraordinary, and Zagidullin matches her with a predatory patience that makes the duet as unsettling as it is beautiful.
Harker’s transformation. Burke’s solo as Jonathan fights to reclaim Mina, and himself, is the most physically raw sequence in the production. There is nothing decorative about it. Every movement reads as a man being pulled apart.
The Brides close in. The Ghosts get their showcase here, shifting from the elegant, floating lines of Act One into a ferocious, coordinated attack on the couple. It is some of the most imaginative choreography in the whole production, all staccato footwork and sudden predatory bursts, and it is the moment the audience around me stopped breathing quietly and started gasping out loud.
The blood soaked finale. Verity Hampson’s lighting design does extraordinary work throughout, but it peaks here, washing the stage in deep, saturated red as the Ghosts close in and the story reaches its resolution. It is the single most striking image of the night, and the one the audience was still talking about on the way out.
Dracula: Ballet at its Darkest earns its reputation as one of the most talked about new Australian ballet productions in recent memory. It is dark, sensual and technically superb, and it wears its two hours lightly. For a wordless piece, it tells its story with unusual clarity, helped enormously by a cast that treats every gesture as if it matters. It does.
Her Majesty’s Theatre
219 Exhibition Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
Season: 10 September to 25 October 2026
