There’s something fitting about a production called Dracula: Ballet at its Darkest choosing spring for its Australian return. As the light lengthens across Melbourne and Sydney, BIG Live is bringing its gothic reimagining of Dracula home for the biggest run the company has ever staged on local soil: 65 performances across two cities, following sold out seasons in London’s West End, a run across the United States, and a record breaking Australia and New Zealand tour in 2025.
What strikes me most isn’t the scale, though 65 shows is no small feat. It’s the fact that an independent, government funding free company founded in Brisbane has built something that genuinely competes on the world’s biggest stages, then chosen to bring that success back to where it started.
The numbers tell part of the story. Melbourne gets 35 performances at Her Majesty’s Theatre, running from 10 September to 25 October 2026, timed neatly with the venue’s 140th anniversary year. Sydney‘s season was originally set at eight performances at the State Theatre from 22 to 27 September. Due to overwhelming demand, that’s been extended with a further 22 performances at the Capitol Theatre from 7 to 29 November, bringing Sydney’s total to 30 shows.
That Capitol Theatre extension carries extra weight for the industry. It fills dates left vacant after the cancellation of Beetlejuice: The Musical’s Sydney season, and Foundation Theatres Chief Executive Graeme Kearns didn’t shy away from framing it in those terms. He pointed to the confidence producers need to invest and adapt in a tough climate, and called BIG Live’s growth from Australian roots to international audience “particularly significant.” Productions at this scale, he noted, sustain artists, musicians, technicians and theatre workers well beyond opening night.
Her Majesty’s Theatre Chief Operating Officer Quan Tu echoed that sentiment from Melbourne’s side, welcoming back a production that’s now played across the United Kingdom, the United States, Asia and Australasia, and calling its storytelling and theatrical scale “particularly exciting” for the venue’s milestone year.
For BIG Live’s Executive Director and Co founder Khalid Tarabay, the story is one of independent ambition paying off. Operating without government funding, the company is on track to sell more than 400,000 tickets across its productions in 2026, with over 200,000 people expected to see Dracula alone during its international tour this year. “The touring landscape is challenging right now, but there is also real cause for confidence,” he said, pointing to audience demand as proof that Australian led work can hold its own anywhere.
Artistic Director, Choreographer and Co founder Joel Burke created Dracula in Brisbane on a simple premise: that ballet can deliver the same emotional scale and intensity as any major theatrical production. The result is a cinematic, unapologetically theatrical retelling of Bram Stoker’s gothic classic, built around forbidden love, grief, obsession, immortality and sacrifice. For Burke, seeing that vision welcomed in London, the US and Asia before returning home for these seasons is, in his words, “enormously rewarding.”
The production draws on a genuinely international cast, with dancers whose backgrounds span the Mariinsky Theatre, English National Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, The Australian Ballet and Queensland Ballet. BIG Live principals Ervin Zagidullin and Abbey Hansen lead as Dracula and Mina Harker, with guest artist Adamzhan Bakhtiyar appearing at selected performances.
Visually, the world is built by award winning CTS Design, all gothic grandeur and shadow. The score, led by Emmy Award winning composer Jason Fernandez, weaves in music from Bach, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Mendelssohn, Saint Saëns and Debussy, giving the choreography a classical backbone beneath its contemporary theatrical staging.
This Australian leg comes off the back of stops at the London Palladium, Sadler’s Wells, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre and Singapore’s Esplanade Theatre. Once the Melbourne and Sydney seasons wrap, the tour continues on to Hong Kong and Bangkok in January 2027.
Melbourne (10 September to 25 October 2026)
Her Majesty’s Theatre
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Sydney (22 to 27 September 2026)
State Theatre
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Sydney
Capitol Theatre (7 to 29 November 2026)
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