A New Contemporary Ballet by Meredith Ventura
Part of Sorcière / Carmilla: A Gothic Double Bill
October 30–November 1, 2026
Center Stage Theater | Santa Barbara
Before Dracula, there was Carmilla.
This Halloween, Novus Contemporary Ballet premieres Carmilla, a new one-act ballet by Artistic Director Meredith Ventura, inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu’s groundbreaking 1872 Gothic novella.
Performed alongside Chloé Roberts’ Sorcière by Selah Dance Collective, Carmilla is part of a haunting double bill exploring witchcraft, vampirism, desire, and the monstrous feminine.
CARMILLA
THE ORIGINAL FEMALE VAMPIRE
Published in 1872—more than twenty years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula—Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla introduced one of literature’s earliest and most enigmatic vampires.
When the mysterious Carmilla arrives at the isolated home of a young woman named Laura, the two form an immediate and increasingly intimate attachment. But as Laura begins to weaken and strange deaths spread through the surrounding countryside, Carmilla's identity—and the nature of her desire—become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Sensual, unsettling, and unmistakably queer, Carmilla has haunted Gothic literature for more than 150 years.
Now, Novus brings her story to the ballet stage.
Choreographed by Meredith Ventura, Carmilla uses contemporary ballet to enter the psychological and erotic world of Le Fanu’s novella. At its center is the relationship between Carmilla and Laura: intimate and dangerous, romantic and predatory, liberating and destructive.
Rather than reducing Carmilla to villain or victim, the ballet embraces those contradictions. Through the vampire, Carmilla asks what happens when female appetite becomes monstrous—and whether the true source of horror is desire itself or a world determined to contain it.
The result is a ballet about hunger in all its forms: for blood, for intimacy, for freedom, and for another person.
SORCIÈRE X CARMILLA
A Gothic Double Bill
Carmilla shares the evening with Chloé Roberts’ Sorcière, performed by Selah Dance Collective.
Where Carmilla enters the world of the vampire, Sorcière turns toward the witch—another woman historically transformed into a monster because of her knowledge, independence, and power.
Together, the works ask:
Who gets called dangerous?
Who gets called monstrous?
And what happens when those monsters tell their own stories?
Dark, sensual, theatrical, and created for Halloween weekend, Sorcière / Carmilla brings two visions of the Gothic feminine to Center Stage Theater.
OCTOBER 30–NOVEMBER 1, 2026
CENTER STAGE THEATER | SANTA BARBARA