Blood & Guts Ballet Memphis' briefer and braver Dracula. by Ashley Fantz t took blood, sweat, and blood. Ballet Memphis' fall season debut of Dracula is a reincarnation of the Transylvanian smoothie. Forget the melodrama of B-movie bloodsuckers or Francis Ford Coppola's extravagant more-cleavage-to-the-bite interpretation. After one month of rehearsals, three injured dancers, budget wrangling, and a stipulation that slimmed the typically two-hour production down to 50 minutes, the ballet has given new life to Bram Stoker's nocturnal neck-nibbler. If anyone could make this production fly, it's 37-year-old Hazel Sabas-Gower. The inventive choreographer has worked with Ballet Memphis' principals before, garnering praise for her staging of Deconstructing Gershwin at the first competition of classical choreography held in Paris this year. Known for her easy-going rapport with dancers and unexpected tweaking of traditional ballet steps, Sabas-Gower gives Dracula a contemporary feel without compromising the novel's classic themes. "The theme is also a kind of cliche, and cliches are common in ballets," says Sabas-Gower. "When Mina dies after Dracula bites her, it's up to Harker, her fiancé to win back her soul. It's about love conquering even death." The biggest challenge the choreographer faced was how to edit the ballet down to 50 minutes. She chose to forego minor characters that are often portrayed as significant, such as Mina's lusty childhood friend Lucy, who is the first to be bitten, and Van Helsing, a skeptical psychiatrist. "You wouldn't believe how much of a headache I had containing this in 50 minutes," she says. "A movie has its advantages with special effects -- the transitions from the country to the city are easier, as well as conveying the story's supernatural elements. I tried not to change the setting so much. Initially, I was afraid to do some things because they seemed too ambitious for the stage." Rather than Lucy falling victim first, Mina is the prey throughout. She takes on some of Lucy's characteristics, such as sleepwalking. After reading Harker's diary about his time in Transylvania, Mina assumes the passages about Dracula are purely fantasy until she falls asleep in a garden and encounters Dracula for the first time. The plot moves quickly from there to Mina and Harker's wedding where she is bitten a second time and dies. Harker swears to save her soul in the after-life. Choosing the dancers who would portray Mina, Harker, and Dracula came easily for Sabas-Gower. The three dancers had to be technically capable and great actors. Dawn Fay, Joseph Jefferies, and Andrew Allagree had already proven that they had the right presence, technical abilities, and open-minded attentive attitudes from competing in Paris with the choreographer. "When you see Dawn, she just stands out from everyone else," Sabas-Gower says. "And Joseph is young, good-looking, and has an essential vitality." If presence is what Sabas-Gower wanted, she got that and more in Allagree. The height of a birch tree with hands that could wrap five times around Mina's neck, Allagree was physically an excellent casting choice. "He's an ambiguous character. He's an animal, a wolf, but he's also part of the aristocracy as a count. He's a little bit androgynous, too," says Allagree. "There's also a seduction of blood and flesh that's very raw. I don't want the audience to interpret that as something sexual. It's the power of deciding, 'Am I going to make someone immortal or not?'" Technically, Allagree is more than capable of the role. He danced with the main company of New York's esteemed Joffrey Ballet; studied with ballets in Houston, Tulsa, San Francisco, and Chicago; and spent a year with the Royal Winnepeg Ballet in Canada. "I was attracted to the piece because Dracula is more than a human life-form," he says. "Simplicity speaks the most when you have to come on rather strong most of the time." Dawn Fay began dancing when she was three years old and moved from Memphis at six. She graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts at 16 and danced with Ballet Oklahoma and the Miami City Ballet before moving to Belgium to dance with the Royal Ballet of Flanders. After 10 years abroad, she wanted a change. Her grandmother wanted her only grandchild to come back to Memphis. "I think Mina is not a lot like me, but she's an easy character to play," Fay says. "She's English and prim and proper but not as naive as one would think. She doesn't understand what's happening, but she deals with it. She's very strong." The unconventionality of the show is also heard in its score. Although the ballet version of Dracula has been performed on stage before, no one has composed an original dance score. Sabas-Gower was going to mix some Stravinsky with numbers taken from Coppola's film, until she found an obscure 74-minute ballet Dracula score on amazon.com two weeks before rehearsals began. "It always works out. I just have to have confidence in that," says the choreographer, who has returned to her home in Colorado and left the dancers to finish final rehearsals. "I have to have that kind of faith between me and my dancers. I don't like to dictate. It's our show." Dracula Showing October 9th and 10th, The Orpheum