Dance With Me, Harker... a saucy revamped Dracula: naked vampire brides wrapped in plastic, insane asylum inmates teetering on ballet pointe, a hip go-go and ballroom dancing Dracula, blood martinis for thirsty vampires, nuns knitting long red scarves, and bat marionettes.  Dance With Me, Harker maintains the multi-narrator format of the novel, with characters reading from a variety of journals, newspapers, telegrams and letters, while documentary interviews and television news reports interrupt the action to tell of the sexual threat in their midst…namely, one devilishly handsome vampire dancing his way into several women and men’s arms. Vampires…Sex…Kitsch…Dance With Me, Harker serves up the requisite biting and, of course, sucking.  Nudity, yes.  Kissing…boy and girl, girl and girl, boy and boy.  After all, what care vampires for gender?  Combat moments of stalking, wrestling, and strangling…a rape.  The Dracula myth is the ultimate tale of power and evil, with a Zen undercurrent that reminds us to take responsibility for inviting evil into our lives (for, lest we forget, vampires enter only when invited).   Heavy themes from this classic novel are laden with a healthy dose of humor and sex, which is why Dracula remains a perennial favorite.  This current incarnation is set in the morally-repressed late 1950’s, when the fear of Russian invasion and nuclear weaponry threatened to over-expose the picture-perfect Ozzie & Harriet family-unit safely snug in their beds; when all the while perfect young misses were taking study-breaks from Vassar to do it in the backseat of their Oldsmobile.

Renfield (Shelleen Kostabi) and Dracula (Richard Omar): (photo at left) seduction flamenco, (photos below) bandaged suicide wrists, the Satan-Ordog ballet, catching flies.

(Photos Below, Left to Right) Dracula's rainy day in London town had him up and had him down, Dracula shares the daily news with the Nuns (Honor Molloy and Silvia Saponaro), Dracula and Vampire Bride at Lucy's grave, Vampire Bride (Tamara Van Leeuwen) stalks Harker

Wallis Knot theatrical productions incorporate multi-lingual texts into every show. Dance With Me, Harker features the languages of the many international casts members: Italian, Dutch, Irish, Chinese, Czechoslovakian, and Spanish.  Wallis Knot is dedicated to taking a fresh, modern look at the classics, and performing extensive dramaturgical research to create and stage their adaptations.      

(Left to Right) Dr. Seward (Jyota Bertrand) and Dr. Van Helsing (Kathy Hendrickson) discuss the vampire case; Dracula at Lucy's bedroom window; Dracula about to kill Lucy and roll her dead body in plastic; Lucy enjoys a blood martini while the Nun operates a bat marionette outside her room.

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