Dracula Has Landed in Sydney, and This Is Not Your Typical Night at the Ballet

When was the last time you went out and did something that didn’t involve a kids’ menu, someone asking for a snack or checking whether you packed enough wipes? If a proper grown-up night out is overdue, Dracula: Ballet at its Darkest has just landed at Sydney’s State Theatre, and this might be one to add to the group chat quickly.

Forget what you think you know about ballet. This is gothic, dramatic, dark and designed to feel more like a huge theatrical production than a traditional night watching tutus and pirouettes. There is one catch. Dracula is only at the State Theatre from 22 to 27 September, with just eight performances in this first Sydney season.

Ballet, But Make It Dark

Based on Bram Stoker’s gothic classic, Dracula: Ballet at its Darkest takes all the obsession, forbidden love, grief, immortality and sacrifice of the original story and puts it on stage through ballet. Created and choreographed by BIG Live Artistic Director and co-founder Joel Burke, the production was deliberately designed to appeal not only to people who already love ballet, but also to those of us who might usually scroll straight past the word “ballet” when deciding what to do on a rare child-free night.

And we all know the pressure that comes with one of those nights. Once you have organised the babysitter, negotiated bedtime instructions, located something that isn’t activewear and actually made it out the front door, whatever you have booked needs to be worth it. Dracula certainly sounds like it intends to deliver on the spectacle.

The cast includes artists with experience across the Mariinsky Theatre, English National Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, The Australian Ballet and Queensland Ballet, with BIG Live principals Ervin Zagidullin and Abbey Hansen performing as Dracula and Mina Harker. Then there is the music. The production combines an original score led by Emmy Award-winning composer Jason Fernandez with works from Bach, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns and Debussy. Add gothic sets, dramatic costumes and a story most of us already know, and suddenly ballet night sounds a little more like date night.

An Australian Production That Has Gone Global

There is also a pretty great Australian story behind it. Dracula was created in Brisbane and has since made its way onto some impressive international stages, including the London Palladium, Sadler’s Wells, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre and Singapore’s Esplanade Theatre.

More than 200,000 people are expected to see Dracula during its 2026 international tour alone, with Hong Kong and Bangkok still to come in January 2027. For Burke, bringing the production back to Australia is something of a homecoming. “Dracula was created in Brisbane with the belief that ballet can deliver the same emotional intensity, scale and excitement as any major theatrical production,” Burke says.

“We wanted to create something cinematic, immediate and unapologetically theatrical, an experience that could connect with devoted ballet audiences while also bringing people into the theatre who may never previously have considered seeing a ballet.” That last part is probably what makes Dracula particularly interesting to us. You don’t need to know anything about ballet before you walk through the doors.

Only Eight Performances at the State Theatre

If you are already mentally checking who can babysit, you’ll want to move fairly quickly. Dracula is playing at Sydney’s State Theatre from 22 to 27 September 2026 for just eight performances.

The good news is that if this week is completely impossible because, well, kids, sport, work, school and life, Sydney audiences are getting another chance. Demand has already seen an additional 22 performances added at the Capitol Theatre from 7 to 29 November. So Dracula will rise again.

But if you want to catch the State Theatre season, this week is your chance.

Dracula: Ballet at its Darkest

State Theatre, Sydney: 22 to 27 September 2026

Capitol Theatre, Sydney: 7 to 29 November 2026

For tickets and performance information, visit:

• Sydney – State Theatre: 22 – 27 September 2026 | 8 performances | Tickets and venue information
• Sydney – Capitol Theatre: 7 – 29 November 2026 | 22 additional performances | Tickets and venue information