Mark Bruce chats about Dracula

Your pieces are very visceral. What inspires this for Dracula beyond the novel?

I've always had a very clear vision of the visceral nature of the scenes in Dracula. Once you pair everything down each scene has a powerful driving energy dramatically and movement wise – but also visually. The colours and staging, lighting was always arresting in my mind.

I began by creating and developing this world with the great creative team I worked with on the production. The movement of vampires allowed a lot of scope for conceiving a varied movement vocabulary, and for Dracula – his association with animals, wolves, bats – all these elements set up a lot of possibilities.

Where do your ideas for dance pieces come from?

You can't contrive ideas – they come to you – they are elusive and from deep in your subconscious. Things can be a catalyst for releasing them – like the novel Dracula for instance, but where they really originate is impossible to tell. We are all inspired by different things – things push buttons inside us. I generally feed myself with things – whether music, literature, films – everything in life. Then I get ideas – they just appear, and my job is to sort through them all and see if any have the potential to become a piece of work.

Why do you think vampires remain from popular in everything from Twilight to Let the Right One in?

They are attractive and dangerous – they represent the unknown. They provide a fantasy vision beyond death – a curse and blessing. We want to be seduced by them, or we want to be them.

With so many dance companies touring the UK, what makes Mark Bruce Company stand out?

I can't speak for all other companies because I haven't seen them all. I have just worked on what I want to do for all these years – my work is dance theatre – but it is like seeing a movie and should appeal to a wide range of people. I am influenced by many things outside of the dance world and many things that lie in popular culture. The work is challenging – but I think it is accessible – it is essential to communicate with an audience. An audience who has never come to a dance show should not have to worry that they won't understand or be inspired by it. Dance is like music – a universal language.

If someone has seen Dracula done by Francis Ford Coppola, the older movies, read the book and knows the material inside out, how would you persuade them to come and see this?

This production is inspired and faithful (to a point) to the book. I have taken certain liberties because I think some of the women's roles needed to be taken further. I like a lot of the movies but the book is the first thing I came to and I read it when I was very young. It is a strange novel but somehow I was completely captivated by it. I have tried to capture this magic and share it. I have tried to get underneath it – find out what it is really about, and I hope that anyone who’s familiar with the novel will come and find out more about why it moves us.

Mark Bruce Company's Dracula tours to the Buxton Opera House (7 October) and Contact – Manchester (10 – 11 October.) For further tour dates, click here.