Buzz
As Halloween draws near, our minds fill with vivid imagery: witches, eerie creatures, ghostly mansions, spine-chilling films, a luminous full moon, and heaps of candy. This is the season to revel in all things dark and mysterious. This year, why not add an unexpected twist to your spooky celebrations—Ballet!
When asked to name a ballet, most of us immediately think of The Nutcracker or Swan Lake. Yet, ballet encompasses far more than its reputation as a charming, old-fashioned art form that tells romantic and whimsical stories for the elite. While ballet is indeed elegant and refined, it can also be unsettling. Many ballets delve into themes that are dark, intense, violent, and even terrifying—and I’m not just referring to the film Black Swan!
In honor of the Halloween season, when the macabre takes center stage, here’s a list of the top 10 creepy and dark ballets.
10. The Cage
A ballet featuring bugs? Absolutely! This avant-garde dance performance debuted in 1951 in America, crafted by the renowned choreographer Jerome Robbins. Spanning 14 minutes, the ballet illustrates the concept of natural selection through a group of female insect dancers who hunt their male counterparts. A standout moment involves a newly-born female insect learning to control her movements before ruthlessly attacking and killing a male intruder.
The ballet’s debut stirred mixed reactions among critics and audiences, even sparking international controversy. Dutch officials nearly succeeded in banning the performance in their country. Accompanied by Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, this peculiar yet imaginative ballet continues to be regarded as bizarre, unsettling, and strikingly original. The next time you spot a creepy-crawly on your floor, picture it as a ballet performer!
9. The Haunted Ballroom
Disney’s Haunted Mansion isn’t the only place where ghosts waltz through a ballroom! The Haunted Ballroom, a ballet that premiered in 1934 in England with choreography by Ninette de Valois, tells the chilling tale of a family cursed by a deadly fate. Each generation’s Master of the house is doomed to dance to his death with three spectral figures haunting the ballroom.
The ballet captures the essence of a Halloween-inspired setting: a shadowy ballroom draped in cobwebs, an ominous night sky, and costumes in muted shades of black, white, and grey. With its ghosts, curses, and eerie atmosphere, this ballet is a truly haunting experience.
8. Eaters of Darkness
This gripping ballet portrays a woman’s harrowing journey into insanity. Eaters of Darkness follows the tale of a young bride unjustly confined to an asylum by her husband, where she is surrounded by true madness and ultimately loses her sanity.
Premiering in 1958 in Germany and choreographed by Walter Gore, this powerful ballet saw significant revivals and gained fame for the intense emotional demands it placed on its lead ballerina. True to its title, Eaters of Darkness delivers a bone-chilling experience.
7. Edward Scissorhands
Fans of dance and the dark side, rejoice: Tim Burton’s iconic tale has been adapted into a ballet! Burton’s 1990 dark fantasy film Edward Scissorhands cemented his reputation as a visionary who masterfully blends the eerie with the emotional. The story revolves around Edward, an artificial human left incomplete after his creator’s death, leaving him with scissors for hands.
In 2005, acclaimed choreographer and director Matthew Bourne introduced a captivating ballet adaptation of the film to UK audiences. Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands reinterprets the tale for the stage, blending dance and mime to capture its whimsical charm, humor, and underlying darkness. This visually striking ballet is both enchanting and eerily beautiful.
6. Giselle
Next on the list is the beloved ghost ballet Giselle. First performed in 1841 in France, Giselle has become a cornerstone of ballet. The story follows a young peasant woman, Giselle, who descends into madness and dies of heartbreak after being deceived by the man she loves.
After her death, Giselle is laid to rest in the forest and becomes a wili—a spectral spirit of women who died betrayed by their lovers. These ghostly figures haunt the forest at night, forcing men to dance until they perish. Giselle, however, protects her betrayer from the wilis’ vengeance before returning to her grave at dawn. The ballet’s second act unfolds in a moonlit forest cemetery, filled with vengeful ghostly dancers, creating a haunting and deeply moving tale.
5. Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir
Next on our list is a ballet that perfectly embodies the blend of beauty and strangeness in art. Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir (translated as Variations for a Door and a Sigh) is an avant-garde performance set to an experimental soundscape of the same name. The “music” consists entirely of sound effects like human sighs and the noises of doors—creaks, slams, and rusty hinges.
This 23-minute ballet, which debuted in America in 1974, features two dancers embodying the sound elements: a man representing the Sigh and a woman in a black cape symbolizing the Door. This groundbreaking ballet presents a mesmerizing yet eerie duet of movement and sound, creating a tense, dark energy reminiscent of the opening scenes of a horror film.
4. Mayerling
Mayerling is a gripping ballet inspired by a true and shocking historical event—the mysterious deaths of a royal prince and his young mistress in 1889. The story follows Rudolph, Crown Prince of Austria, whose emotional instability and obsession with death lead him down a dark path. Forced into a political marriage, he begins an affair with Mary Vetsera, a teenager who shares his morbid fascinations.
The tale reaches its climax at the Mayerling hunting lodge, where the couple engages in a final act of passion before fulfilling a suicide pact. After their intimate moment, Rudolph shoots Mary and then himself, leaving the royal family to scramble to conceal the scandalous and bloody tragedy. This haunting ballet serves as a stark warning about the perils of unchecked passion and dark obsessions.
3. The Red Shoes
No list of dark ballets is complete without mentioning The Red Shoes. This tale has achieved legendary status in the dance world. Written by Hans Christian Andersen, the author of timeless stories like “The Little Mermaid,” “The Ugly Duckling,” and “Thumbelina,” “The Red Shoes” is a haunting fairy tale about a young peasant girl cursed to dance endlessly in her red shoes. To break the curse, she resorts to extreme measures, including amputating her own feet.
This story inspired the 1948 film The Red Shoes, which explores a ballerina’s tragic choice between love and her dance career, culminating in her demise. The film is renowned for its 17-minute ballet sequence, a dark and cinematic interpretation of Andersen’s tale. In 2016, acclaimed choreographer Matthew Bourne created a stage adaptation of the story, drawing inspiration from both the fairy tale and the iconic film.
Bourne’s award-winning ballet The Red Shoes celebrates Hollywood’s golden era by featuring music from Bernard Herrmann, the composer behind some of cinema’s most dramatic scores, including Psycho, Fahrenheit 451, Citizen Kane, and The Twilight Zone. Whether in literature, theater, or film, this cautionary tale uses dance to explore the dangers of obsession and pride.
2. The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring caused an uproar when it premiered in Paris in 1913. The fusion of Igor Stravinsky’s powerful orchestral score and Vaslav Nijinsky’s daring choreography created an overwhelming experience, reportedly sparking a riot among the audience during its debut performance.
The ballet portrays a pagan ritual where a young woman is chosen as a sacrificial offering, dancing herself to death through a series of frenetic leaps. This controversial performance deeply unsettled its viewers, becoming a historic example of how bold artistic expression can provoke extreme reactions.
1. Sleeping Beauty
The beloved fairy tale of Princess Aurora, cursed into a deep sleep by an evil fairy, is widely known. In 2012, innovative choreographer Matthew Bourne unveiled a dark, gothic reinterpretation of this classic story, set to Tchaikovsky’s iconic Sleeping Beauty score.
Bourne’s adaptation of Sleeping Beauty introduces unsettling elements like bloodthirsty vampires, an eerie baby puppet, malevolent fairies and rodents, a seductive nightclub scene, and a nightmarish sequence where Aurora is forced to dance faceless, appearing demonic. This bold and imaginative take on the tale is guaranteed to leave you wide awake.
