Inland Pacific Ballet: bloodless ‘Dracula’

Nestled between its Balanchine programs, which end this weekend in Bridges Auditorium at the Claremont Colleges, Inland Pacific Ballet ventured a new dance version of “Dracula.” Like other companies trying to balleticize the nocturnal Transylvanian, IPB stumbled badly.

Choreographed in nine scenes by Arturo Fernandez, ballet master for Alonzo King’s San Francisco-based Lines Ballet, this hourlong version is weak in characterization and choreographic invention. It also taxed the 10-year-old company/school, especially the male dancers.

The length might suggest a kid’s ballet (there were children in Halloween costumes at the Thursday performance), but the dead body carried on stage at the end of the first scene, not to mention drooling female vampires feasting on two men later, suggested a different world.

On the other hand, there was something simplistic about Fernandez’s failure to create real characters. John Harker (Tyrone Baker) and Dr. Seward (Joseph Villalobos) danced identical steps at their first appearance and there was no way of telling them apart. Ditto their fiancees, Mina Murray (Allynne Stoller), Dracula’s next victim, and Lucy Westenra (Laura de Guia).

Dracula (Steven Voznick) didn’t do much actual dancing. He posed and furled his cape and looked fitfully agonized, manipulative or cold. His contingent of undead brides derived their movements, as did all the others, from a mix of academic steps and modern-dance contortions.

Nobody, however, seemed to be dancing out of real need or impulse. The low point was Mina’s sickroom scene, where each person took a few steps, then danced an overwrought solo for no apparent reason except that this was a ballet.

The recorded score (Saint-Saens, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and others), which included wolf calls and other horror film standards, was compiled by Scott Fraser and company director Victoria Koenig. Liz Stillwell lighted Nancy Seruto’s resourceful, budget scenic design effectively.

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Inland Pacific Ballet

What: Balanchine program

Where: Bridges Auditorium, Claremont Colleges, 450 N. College Way, Claremont

When: Today, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m.

Price: $25-$30

Contact: (909) 607-1139