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Interview with Ballet co-founder infuses By DEBBIE COUNCIL, Staff Writer A large rustic cart waits just inside a cavernous shop thick with sawdust in Montclair. Classical music is playing in the background. A few feet from the cart, an 80-year-old man puts the finishing touches on a 7-foot black coffin. By tomorrow night, the coffin will be placed on the cart to carry the Prince of Darkness out of the shadows into the world of the living. Or is that the undead? Be afraid. Be very afraid. Ladies and gentlemen, grab some garlic and protect your necks because The Mabel Shaw Bridges Auditorium at The Claremont Colleges is about to be haunted. At 8 p.m. Friday, thunder will vibrate every bone in the audience at the season premiere of the Inland Pacific Ballet's original adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Associate director Kevin Myers climbs 13 steps to the top of the collapsible steel bridge of a gothic castle set that he built to support 15 dancers. Following set designer Nancy Seruto's specifications, this weekend's production is the culmination of a year's worth of planning, design, construction and many late night hours. In his words, the night's performance will be emotionally dark and frightening. Be prepared for a chilling opening. "It'll knock your socks off. It's very powerful. It's 4 1/2 minutes that will put you on the edge of your seat before the curtain comes up," Myers said. In Myers' studio behind the Inland Pacific Ballet, sets and props grow from half-inch scale drawings and models to massive architectural works of art that transport the audience back centuries to Dracula and his undead who stalked their victims for blood. "Dracula is traveling from his castle to the new house that he purchased," Myers said. But there's a second coffin he designed for Dracula's dramatic entrance, surrounded by his undead girls. It's Myers' father, Frank Myers, brushing glow-in-the-dark paint on the coffin that will be transported on the cart across the stage in the opening scene. He says his son has inherited a generation of family talents with a particular talent for manual dexterity. "His great-grandfather was an opera singer in New York and made boots and sold them for $100 a pair. His grandfather was a violinist who started out as a cowboy. A kind of a maverick, bought a horse and a gun," said Frank Myers, a retired school teacher and boat builder. Every constructed scene from Gypsy to the impressive ballroom (which is 65 feet wide, 30 feet high and took two days to assemble) and bedroom to the sickroom has been engineered by Kevin Myers and his crew. There are 52 line sets in Bridges Auditorium for rigging and Dracula has used them all. "They give me nothing but these drawings, maybe a model and the size and I have to create it. I have to engineer and make it work. It's not that hard," he said, matter-of-factly. The Dracula production is much bigger in sets than the Nutcracker in sets, he said, which also is being built. What cost IPB $45,000 to build, the Dracula set elsewhere would be nearly $200,000, he said. It's the ninth major set that Inland Pacific Ballet has constructed. "What I would really like people to know and see is that these sets are comparable to sets that would cost that much to build. Nobody is doing the production level and values of stage production that we're doing of this magnitude," he said, citing the San Francisco Ballet as the only exception. Myers says in order to execute the telling of the story in a professional, classic ballet production and complement the dancers, the stage has to create an ambience and a sense of being in the location. "Anything we can do to accentuate telling of the story and create the best atmosphere possible, we do," he said. "Live theater is very special and unique and there's nothing quite like it." Teacher. Photographer. Costume designer. Public relations. Set builder. He does it all. But dancing is his first love. Growing up in Riverside, 47-year-old Myers practically lives and breathes ballet. He began dancing as an 11-year-old. On a scholarship, he danced for several years in New York. With the Houston Ballet he danced in solo roles including his favorite classic "Giselle." He performed in a variety of Balanchine ballets with the Los Angeles Ballet, including "Tarantella" and "Jewels." "It's one of the most spectacular, emotional and physical achievements one can attain," Myers said. In 1993, he co-founded the Inland Pacific Ballet and the Inland Pacific Ballet Academy with artistic director Victoria Koenig. Tim Morrison, director of the Claremont University Consortium Facilities Department and Bridges Auditorium, says it's been nine years since Inland Pacific Ballet came to Bridges. This season brings "Dracula" on Friday, Saturday and Sunday; "The Nutcracker" is back for its ninth season with new sets performing three weekends beginning at 2 p.m. on Dec. 5.; "The Nutty Nutcracker" is Dec. 10 and Dec. 17; and Cinderella is scheduled for two weekends beginning April 9. There are exclusive Girl Scout performances. "Kevin and Vicky have stretched the company and the ballet audience with things like "Dracula' and "Little Mermaid,' " Morrison said. "A new set (for "The Nutcracker') will be great for the show and the audience." Ticket information: (909) 607-1139 or www.ipballet.org. Debbie Council can be reached by phone at (909) 483-8549.
INLAND PACIFIC BALLET
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