Dracula, Mothman and Poe: Ballet Companies Go Dark for Halloween

Carolina Ballet will premiere a new Dracula on October 15, opening a Halloween season in which at least seven American companies stage ballets built on horror. The run lasts through November 1. Avant Chamber Ballet follows with its own world premiere Dracula on October 30–31, and State Street Ballet presents Dracula, a dark shadow, a new interpretation with live onstage musical accompaniment, the same weekend. Louisville Ballet unveils a new Frankenstein and Madison Ballet stages Jekyll & Hyde from October 29 to November 1.

Three companies are going further, building new narratives rather than revisiting gothic novels: Wonderbound in Denver, Charleston Ballet in West Virginia, and Ballet Des Moines in Iowa.

What is Wonderbound staging?

Garrett Ammon, Wonderbound's artistic director and choreographer, premieres The Witching Hour October 15–25. The ballet explores the hour from 3 am to 4 am, when, as the company frames it, the veil between reality and illusion is thinnest. The story follows two siblings raised on their father's tales of otherworldly beings. After his death, they inherit a pocket watch and a journal, and must move through portals into dangerous alternate worlds while confronting their grief.

The 13-dancer work features live music by the Clay Rose Band, led by Wonderbound's music coordinator Clay Rose, whose new score blends American and European folk with punk and old-school rock. Ammon co-wrote the libretto with Rose.

"I'm taking really straightforward things that we all experience, whether it's loss or fear or addiction, or any number of these very human things that we struggle with," Ammon told Pointe in a phone interview, "then merging them with supernatural aspects to kind of raise the stakes."

Why is Charleston Ballet telling the Mothman story?

Charleston Ballet's The Legend of Mothman runs October 23–24 at the West Virginia Culture Center Theater, with an added October 24 matinee after the Friday performance sold out. Choreographer Kim R. Pauley, based in West Virginia, works from an original story by Deborah Novak and a commissioned score by local composer Matt Jackfert. Carol and Mike DelGrosso contribute motion-captured projections.

The Mothman legend dates to 1966, when Point Pleasant residents reported encounters with a towering humanoid creature with glowing red eyes. Novak's story follows the four teenagers who first reported the creature and the media frenzy that followed. "These were real kids," Pauley told Pointe. "That's what their future became."

Pauley and Novak visited a Point Pleasant museum and met Jeff Wamsley, who published a book documenting sightings and news coverage. "The Mothman is a rich folklore story," Pauley said. "Some people believe it and some people don't. That's what's kind of fun about it."

What does Ballet Des Moines promise?

Ballet Des Moines presents Ghost Stories at Hoyt Sherman Place on October 23–24. The program pairs excerpts from Act II of Giselle with Adriana Pierce's 2023 Ghost Ballads and the world premiere of Nevermore by resident choreographer Tom Mattingly. Poet and actor Bill Weathers narrates. "I want audiences to feel as though they're gathered around a campfire, watching one ghost story move into the next," the company's leadership writes in a press statement.

Mattingly built Nevermore with composer Beau Kenyon on the writings and life of Edgar Allan Poe. "I've always found Poe to be an interesting figure," Mattingly writes via email. "He has managed to be this icon of American authors that is still shrouded in mystery." Sarah Dornink designed costumes for the nonnarrative ensemble work.

Pierce's Ghost Ballads, created on Carolina Ballet, draws on the 18th-century Graveyard Poets and their meditations on mortality. The seven-dancer neoclassical piece is set in a cemetery. Local studio Dance Vision adds a surprise performance, rounding out a program that, as the company puts it, moves "from zombies to poetry to classical ballet."

The season signals where smaller and mid-sized companies are heading: original, locally rooted storytelling as a draw for Halloween audiences.