The South Carolina Ballet is back in Evans Friday for its second year with its popular interpretation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire tale.
Dracula: Ballet with a Bite! will be performed at the Columbia County Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. For ticket info, go here.
“It’s a great introduction to ballet If you’ve never been to the ballet before and you don’t know if you’re going to like it,” said William Starrett, CEO and Artistic Director of the South Carolina Ballet, in a 2024 Augusta Good News article.
Starrett warned that the ballet has a specific audience in mind.
“It’s very adult, very sensual. It’s absolutely not for children. It’s an adult thing to do for Halloween,” he said.
It’s presented that way because vampires have the ability to mesmerize and seduce their intended victims.
Those sensual elements are at the heart of the choreography and the music which isn’t the typical classical score. It features an original rock/jazz score composed by Thomas E. Semanski, and it’s high-energy and heart pounding at times. Semanski received the Popular Music Award from the American Society of Composers for his work on Dracula: Ballet with a Bite, according to the Columbia County Performing Arts Center website.
Headquartered in Columbia, the South Carolina Ballet performs regularly at the Koger Center for the Arts, but the company also has a rigorous touring schedule, traveling in recent years to locations such as Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Savannah and Orlando, Florida.
Last year, the company expanded its reach to the Augusta area, performing Dracula in October 2024 in Columbia County and “Off the Wall and Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green” in March at the Miller Theater.
Expanding to the Augusta area made sense.
“We just saw in our records that so many people were coming here (Columbia). I love Augusta. It’s a great town. (Also,) I was seduced by how beautiful the theater is,” he said.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards, is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award and was named Augusta Magazine’s best local writer in 2024 and 2025. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
