"I have to pinch myself sometimes to convince not dreaming," admits Christopher Gable, artistic director of the Northern Ballet Theatre, whose spectacular new production of Dracula arrives at Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Monday. Twelve years ago, shortly after dancing the role of L.S. Lowry in Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man for NBT, Gable was invited to take charge of this Halifax based touring company. Among its ongoing problems were serious underfunding and the logistical difficulties of taking classical ballet out to small regional theatres with inadequate orchestra pits.
I arrived with all that Covent Garden background in tow," recalls Gable wryly. "If you had a problem you threw a lot of money at it. In this case, that plainly was not going to be a viable solution." What Gable did throw in was his own wealth of artistic experience, first as soloist and principal dancer with Sadler's Wells Opera Ballet, Covent Garden Opera Ballet and the Royal Ballet; then, a highly productive period as an actor, working predominantly with the RSC under Peter Brook, in film and television with Ken Russell, as well as in a number of West End musicals.
"I thought that if I gathered up all this experience, plus my teaching experience at the Central School of Ballet, which I founded in 1982, we would see what happened."
What happened was a complete re reading of the great classical ballets, with thrilling, radical results. In close co operation with music director John Pryce Jones, assistant artistic director Michael Pink and designer Lez Brotherston, Gable forged a new theatrical style, new artistic ethos and new identity, to which his dynamic young dancers responded with a growing confidence in their creative consciousness, which he encouraged in them.
"The first big one was Romeo And Juliet, which was such a runaway success that it took my breath away. That gave us the confidence to move on to Swan Lake, Cinderella, A Christmas Carol, The Brontes and what I consider to be the best thing we have done to date, Dracula.
It was from Ken Russell that the idea came to conceive a ballet out of Bram Stoker's Gothic nightmare. After months of discussion and improvisation by the dancers, followed by the amalgamation of the choreography, the company moved into new uncharted territory of the narrative story. The final product is, in Gable's view "as close as one could get to Stoker's novel, without the words".
"In evolving Dracula, we have combined the clearly defined physical vocabulary of classical dance with the actor's need to explore situation and character, in order to create the most vivid reality on the stage. We have, I believe, brought the two techniques closer than ever before and, in the process, have created a new full length classical ballet.
"WHAT has given me a huge thrill about Dracula is the way it has pulled in new and much younger audiences, particularly more men. It has taken on something of a cult status, with people dressing up in gothicstyle costume and screaming their heads off as the story reaches its climax. It's a far cry from the days when the conservative British public dressed up to the nines and went out to see the same four classical titles over and over again."