Bite Night: This Gala Is Dressed to Kill

Victorian women were expected to be demure, decorous, and to generally avoid spending their evenings in the company of bloodthirsty Transylvanian counts.

Thankfully, times have changed.

On September 19, some of Santa Barbara’s most formidable women will descend upon the Music Academy of the West for State Street Ballet’s annual gala, Victorian Vogue. There will be fashion. There will be fortunes. There will be dancing beneath the waxing moon. And somewhere among all that dark opulence, Dracula will be waiting in the wings.

Not literally, one hopes.

The evening takes its inspiration from Dracula, a dark shadow, State Street Ballet’s newly commissioned season opener, transforming Bram Stoker’s world of Victorian intrigue into something considerably more glamorous – and with a much better guest list.

The Women Behind the Vogue

If Victorian society had rather specific ideas about what women should and should not do, the committee behind Victorian Vogue seems happily determined to ignore most of them.

Gala Chairs Dr. Nicole Callahan and (the) Alex Nourse are joined by a rather remarkable cross-section of Santa Barbara women: entrepreneurs, philanthropists, arts leaders, a former professional ballerina, an attorney, a journalist, a winery owner, and members of State Street Ballet’s own leadership. Also know as: Melody Ellison, Jenna Jobst Reichental, Ashley Flood, Jean Rogers, Janey K. Campbell, Fenna Roukema, Toby Donner, Elizabeth Chandler, and Honorary Committee Member Melanie Trent De Schutter. It is less a committee than a reminder of how many different talents it takes to keep an arts organization dancing.

The evening also marks a changing of the guard. State Street Ballet will honor Roger Thompson, its longtime board member and former board president, while welcoming Callahan into her new role as Board President. Executive Director Cecily MacDougall credits Thompson with guiding the company through numerous periods of growth, while Callahan – a former dancer herself – brings both a deep affection for the art form and an outside perspective shaped by years spent in New York’s dance community.

It is an appropriate moment to celebrate the people behind the curtain because State Street Ballet currently has quite a lot happening in front of it.

The gala begins with an excerpt from George Balanchine’s ethereal Serenade, featuring 18 women onstage and performed in memory of the late Arlyn Goldsby, a longtime supporter and board member who had a particular love for the company’s dancers. From there, guests get their first taste of Dracula, a dark shadow, with choreographer Nicolas Blanc in attendance, before the program jumps forward stylistically to Kassandra Taylor Newberry’s FOLD – a contemporary work inspired by a high-stakes poker game.

Ethereal Balanchine, Dracula, then a poker game.

Who said ballet was stuffy?

Outside Hahn Hall, the theme continues. Costumes from Dracula are expected to haunt the cocktail hour, alongside opportunities for guests to have their portrait sketched or fortune read before dinner beneath the stars.

And for anyone wishing to carry a little Dracula home without the inconvenience of a coffin, there is the live auction.

Among its prizes is a Dior Book Tote featuring the first-edition cover of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The bag comes from Jonathan Anderson’s Dior “dream library” and renders Stoker’s famous cover across one of the house’s signature silhouettes.

Even Dracula, it seems, has succumbed to Dior.

Dracula Takes the Stage

Fashion aside, the Count has more serious business in Santa Barbara.

On October 30 and 31, Dracula, a dark shadow opens State Street Ballet’s 2026–27 season at The Granada Theatre. It is, according to Artistic Director Megan Philipp, one of the largest productions the company has undertaken – and almost everything about it suggests an organization interested in testing the upper limits of what it can put onstage.

Nicolas Blanc, who spent 15 years with the Joffrey Ballet before turning his attention fully to choreography, is creating the new work. His libretto remains rooted in Stoker’s story while selecting and reshaping elements of the novel into his own interpretation. The original Dracula, published in 1897, is itself an unusual piece of storytelling: assembled through letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, and other documents rather than told through a single narrative voice.

For State Street Ballet’s version, Blanc is working with a team that includes scenic designer Jack Mehler and costume designer Ben-Oni Cortes. Rather than leaning into the lavish visual language that often accompanies Dracula productions, the set takes cues from the minimalism of Philip Glass’s score. Cortes’ costumes, meanwhile, draw upon the Victorian period while gently deconstructing it, layering historical references into something less expected.

Then there is the music.

Glass’s score will be performed live onstage by the Kronos Quartet (yeah, that Kronos Quartet).

For a character who has survived more than a century of reinvention – Dracula has appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of adaptations across stage, film, television and other media – finding a fresh pulse is no small assignment.

State Street Ballet is happy to try.

A Season with Teeth

After Dracula retreats to wherever vampires spend the holidays, another familiar figure arrives in December.

The Nutcracker returns to the Granada December 18 through 20, but even the company’s most established tradition is getting a substantial visual refresh. The choreography has evolved over the years as State Street Ballet’s artistic team has updated sections to suit new generations of dancers. This season, however, the most visible change arrives when the curtain rises on Act II: an entirely new set.

The previous backdrop had been in service for roughly two decades. Cortes, already designing costumes for Dracula, has designed the new Nutcracker scenery as well. Before arriving home in Santa Barbara, the production will travel to Spokane, Washington, and Durango, Colorado.

Spring brings a return beneath the waves.

MacDougall and Philipp’s The Little Mermaid, which sold out its 2025 run, returns to the Granada March 6 and 7 with enhanced sets and additional puppetry by Christina McCarthy. After Santa Barbara, the production heads to Provo, Utah – a new touring destination for the company.

Alongside the public performances, State Street Ballet plans free outreach performances for local students, allowing young audiences not only to watch the production but to meet dancers, ask questions and discover the many jobs that exist behind a theatrical production. The company will also continue its sensory-friendly programming, creating a more inclusive theater environment for families with special needs and young children.

There is growth happening between the mainstage productions, too. State Street Ballet is launching the Choreographic Institute of Santa Barbara, spearheaded by Artistic Associate Nilas Martins, creating a place for choreographers to develop new work on the company’s dancers. The ambition, Philipp explained, is for Santa Barbara to become known not simply as a place where dance is performed and taught, but as a hub where new dance is actually made.

The season concludes May 22 and 23 with another collaboration with the Santa Barbara Symphony, Brahms & Balanchine: Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. The triple bill moves from Brahms’ “Symphony No. 3” to a world premiere by Martins and Philipp set to Samuel Barber’s “String Quartet No. 1 in B Minor,” before finishing with Balanchine’s wonderfully theatrical Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.

That last work brings rivalry, murder plots, showgirls, tap dancing, speaking roles, and Broadway swagger onto the ballet stage. Sets are coming from Pacific Northwest Ballet; costumes from Miami City Ballet.

Demure and decorous, indeed.

Something Is Growing in the Dark

Taken separately, these are productions. Taken together, they reveal something larger happening at State Street Ballet.

Three years into MacDougall and Philipp’s leadership, the company is simultaneously commissioning major new work, expanding existing productions, touring new cities, collaborating with nationally recognized artists and local cultural institutions, developing choreographers, and investing more deeply in its dancers.

Perhaps the clearest measure of that growth never appears beneath a spotlight.

For the past two years, State Street Ballet’s artists were guaranteed 26 weeks of work. This season, with additional touring, the new Choreographic Institute and the demands of creating these productions, that number rises to 32 weeks – a level Philipp describes as competitive with other dance companies around the country.

For dancers who have moved their lives to Santa Barbara, six additional weeks are more than a statistic. They mean more sustainable careers, more time in the studio, and more opportunity to become part of the community at whose pleasure they perform. 

MacDougall and Philipp are quick to place this evolution within the company’s larger history. Founder Rodney Gustafson spent three decades building State Street Ballet; today’s leadership describes itself as standing on his shoulders. Yet after three years of pushing the company forward, neither sounds particularly interested in settling comfortably onto them.

There is, as Philipp puts it, a “hunger for more.”

Which brings us back to September 19.

Victorian Vogue may arrive dressed as a party – a splendid salon of fashion, performance, cocktails and moonlit dinner – but beneath the corsets and gothic glamour is something more consequential. The gala raises roughly a quarter of State Street Ballet’s contributed income, helping make possible everything that follows after the fortunes are read, the Dior bag finds a new arm, and Dracula slips back into the shadows.

A bigger production. A longer season. New choreography. New cities. More work for artists. More reasons for audiences to come through the theater doors.

Bram Stoker understood that certain things must first be invited in.

On September 19, State Street Ballet opens the door.  

Visit https://statestreetballet.com for tickets or to become a sponsor