Contemporary choreographer, dance artist and educator Jenni Large questions notions of transgression in the two films Reap the Day and Night Wrath. In both the films, the central character is a mythology-inspired fictional female Dracula, and this epitomises her investigation. The Dracula is a transgression from the humanness that we are familiar with, and the new gender ascribed to that creature further deviates from the hypermasculine space the Dracula inhabits in mythology and popular culture. The female Dracula, then, is a new site of resistance and liberation at the same time. This conflicting duality becomes the driving force of both films and shapes the dramaturgy.

What would it mean for an immortal character to draw its last breath? Could there truly be a last breath? And how might they prepare for it?

The soundscapes that were created for both films were interpretations of “preparations for an ending” or the “last breath”. For Jenni and her sound designer Anna Whitaker, the breath and its associated exhales/release become a source of the creature’s agency. These sounds were utilised as narrative triggers as Jenni worked alongside her videographer Gabriel Comerford.  

Both the films capture different aspects of the female Dracula. Yet the affective and visceral response that Jenni elicits seems to be in contrast to the visual and aural that the viewer experiences. Night Wrath perhaps keeps closer to what we recognise as the Dracula - one that is comfortable with the night, dark spaces, and gritty nooks and corners such as the graffiti stained urban walls. The polyrhythms in the sound design complement the sense of trance and hypnotic psychedelic 1970s-80s cinema scene where the Dracula was prevalent. Night Wrath explores the symbolism of an inhale - as a beginning of something. She is gearing up, preparing, sucking in, in order to spit out. The movements of the character have a sense of urgency, she is amidst an obscure cathartic experience - somewhat nostalgic and narcissistic -  as the knowledge of her last breath looms. There is both the characters' will to survive and the disdain for immortality.

This tongue-in-cheek homage to the economically-made budget Dracula movies of the 1980s, offers an altered state of comedy for the audience. In direct contrast, the brightly lit Reap the Day explores, the impending exhale - the knowledge that surrender must come. This film accentuates the female figure and subverts typical narratives associated with femininity and echoes a sense of empathetic loneliness. The sound design is underscored by church bells and with the stripping away of the wedding gown (nodding to the “vampire bride”) that reveals fangs, there is a throughline of rebellion. She is not deviant by nature, rather she is perceived as deviant through a patriarchal lens and she attempts to shed this imposed image. The movement vocabulary and the editing techniques employed such as retrograde and speed alteration, gave a sense of being stuck in a loop, subtly altering the viewer's experience of time and gravity. These nuances nod to the production-effects used in horror films pre-CGI and attempt to displace the character. The humour and seriousness of both films then offers two distinct perspectives on looking at the conventional Dracula.

What happens after we take that last breath? For a creature suspended in immortality, is there ever a last breath? If you knew your last breath was near, how would you prepare?

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