An Interview with Tara Birtwhistle on her originating the role of Stoker's victim, Lucy on stage and then bringing the helpless damsel to film for Guy Maddin....

Dracula At The Ballet - An interview with Tara Birtwhistle

May 2007

By: Kindah Mardam Bey

Perhaps the ballet is not the first place you would be inclined to search for Dracula, or at least before 1998 you wouldn’t have. But since then, the brain child of Artistic Director Andre Lewis of the Royal Winnipeg (Canada) ballet to have the enigmatic-fanged-seducer step into point shoes and thrill audiences centre stage, appears to be a perfectly natural and highly applauded experience. North American culture seems to have a healthy obsession with the Vampiric Lord of Bram Stoker’s frightening fairy tale and innumerable versions of Dracula has shown up on celluloid and Halloween parties alike. Somewhere along the way Dracula became a perfect form of ballet expression. One person who has seen the perpetual rise, rebirth and continual success of the almost decade long run of Dracula from The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is the elegant prima ballerina Tara Birtwhistle; who both, originally created the role of Lucy on stage and in the Guy Maddin film of the Dracula ballet.

For those unfamiliar with the novel of Dracula but familiar with the pop culture villain, I am sure you are scratching your heads and quandering…Lucy who? Well, Lucy Westerna is the heedful warning to the reader/audience; she is Dracula’s ultimate victim. Setup in the first half of the ballet, we see Lucy already bit by Dracula and under his influence. When little boys and girls are told to stay in bed or else some terrible monster will come and get them….Lucy was the little girl who didn’t listen. The audience slowly watches Lucy digress to a state of pure evil from her former position of Victorian Lady. Bram Stoker knew what he was doing when he wrote the character of Lucy, because when Dracula sets his sights on Mina Murray – Lucy’s friend – after Lucy’s demise, the reader is compelled to feel more protective of Mina, knowing what Lucy suffered.

On a crisp day in April, Tara Birtwhistle has a terrible head cold that has consumed her well being. She is fighting back valiantly as she has high energy performances of Dracula before, during, and after her cold. Birtwhistle has performed the role of Mina Murray the night before, and this is her first season of Dracula playing the softer and more fragile character. A dedicated follower of her profession, Birtwhistle left her Sherwood Park (Alberta) home when she was fourteen years old for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and never left. She schooled and danced with the school from 1986. Her career in the repertoire has lasted sixteen years and as Birtwhistle told me, she performed every role she could ever wish to do. This last season alone, she has played the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella, Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, The Queen of The Night in The Magic Flute, performed in Dracula as Lucy and Mina, not to mention contemporary pieces without character lists she is currently performing in. Tara Birtwhistle has played Lucy since her birth on stage almost a decade ago, and it will be quite possibly the role she will be known for in her career.

In 1998 Artistic Director Andre Lewis asked Mark Goddin to create a story ballet based on Dracula. Goddin took Bram Stoker’s version of Dracula and shaped a gut wrenching and formidable ballet out of it. ‘I was chosen to be Lucy and he created the character on me. It was a role that started from scratch. We worked on Lucy together, basing her in large part on the character from Stoker’s book. It was wonderful, as I had a lot of exciting options to explore over the artistic direction of the role,’ Tara Birtwhistle explains.

As this ballerina explains the character of Lucy through her own eyes, I get a clear understanding that Birtwhistle knows Lucy as if she were wearing the role like the gauze nightdress she wears each night in character. Each rough edge from over use, or falling hemline that might constitute the flaws of such a nightdress worn night after night; devolving into a spiral of one woman’s hell, Birtwhistle seems to understand and value each flaw and aspect to the material of Lucy’s character. Birtwhistle explains ‘Lucy has many qualities, particularly because she is torn between the realms of good and evil. In forty five minutes she goes from a Victorian Lady to a sexual predator, into a Zombie and then at the end, she is just an animal. We all watch her slowly turn into a vampire, right in front of our eyes.’

How does Birtwhistle take on the challenging role? She tells me ‘I’ve always approached dancing from an acting point of view. So a role like Lucy fully allows me to approach a role through acting as she is a highly evolved character. Especially because of my path with Lucy, in both film and on stage, I can get into the character of Lucy quite easily now.’ Almost like putting on a familiar nightdress, some might say?

Speaking of the film version reminded me of when Domino Films recently released the production on DVD. For a few reasons, the Dracula performed on film, based on the stage version was simply one of the best renditions of Dracula I have ever watched. For one reason, the film was shot on stage as opposed to off the stage and watching the action from an audience seat. The audience member was able to engross themselves in the performances because the audience was so close to the action. A secondary reason was because Guy Maddin, Canadian Director and auteur of films like Tales From The Gimli Hospital and The Saddest Music In The World, stuck his solid brand of unique, surreal, and enticing vision to the production. Tara Birtwhistle recollects the similarity between the film and stage versions ‘Performing the role in different forms wasn’t actually that different. The ballet version of Dracula runs like an old silent film, which is exactly how Guy Maddin filmed it. A black and white silent horror film. We didn’t actually change much from the stage production when making the film.’

Birtwhistle has put her own fingerprint on the complex and tortured character of Lucy, and when asked what is the best part about playing Lucy, she is quick to respond ‘being absolutely evil.’ Birtwhistle says this in a giddy and somewhat devilish sort of way. She further postulates as to why society has such a passion for the Bram Stoker type of villain found in both Lucy and Dracula ‘everyone knows and can relate to the character of Dracula. Everyone has a dark side to them. Whether you are a fan of ballet or a fan of the novel Dracula, we all feel that sense of darkness within our soul a little bit and can explore that aspect of ourselves through Dracula and even Lucy to some extent.’

When Birtwhistle isn’t indulging her (and our) dark side, she can be equally inspired by the ballet of Romeo and Juliet ‘I love to perform Romeo and Juliet and love to watch it being performed as well. No matter whether I am performing a role or in a contemporary piece, I approach dance through emotions as opposed to physical side of it. I enjoy becoming a character; their is a lot of acting in how I perform ballet and acting through the performance of ballet is one of the aspects I love most about what I do.’

With such a clear passion for her characters and her profession Birtwhistle also has an equally clear answer when discussing youths wanting to going into the realm of ballet ‘if you aspire to be a ballet dancer, put everything you have into it early on because you have a small window of opportunity in the dance world. However, if you do not succeed to become a ballerina after all of your efforts, the discipline and endeavour will have value no matter what. In a sense, it is worth taking the leap, either way.’ Spoken like a true dancer.

Birtwhistle has come to realize that the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is her home and she will most likely go into fundraising after her dance career comes to an end. ‘The ballet is fortunate in Winnipeg as we have a lot of outside support. Art should be a part of everyone’s lives. It is unfortunate that we do not take a European perspective to the arts and have majority government funding. Everyone has access to the arts in Europe. I wish we were on a par with sports professionals here, sports and physical education is important, but so are the arts.’

It appears that Tara Birtwhistle will be passionate about any aspect of ballet in her life; whether it be a particular role she has moulded out of character development, or whether it is a desire to see the arts flourish and grow, Birtwhistle has something that Lucy will never be able to have - a strong sense of self.