Stirring the cauldron of creativity, Ballet Des Moines will conjure a captivating evening of dance with its frightfully fantastic Ghost Stories, Oct. 23 and 24. The first official performance of the company’s 2026/27 season after a preview in August, Ghost Stories includes Nevermore, another world premiere from the unbridled imagination of the company’s resident choreographer, Tom Mattingly.
Artistic Director Eric Trope, who conceived Ghost Stories, shared insights into the trio of ballets with Little Village. He hopes the evening “sweeps audiences beyond the usual entry point of The Nutcracker into a much broader understanding and appreciation of ballet for what it offers cultural consumers.”
Trope imports a wealth of international dance and choreographic experience to Des Moines from his work with companies in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Germany, Spain and beyond.
Tell us a little about your approach to increasing the appeal of ballet to wider audiences.
[Last year] was my first full season of creation [with Ballet Des Moines]. Something that’s important to me in the ballet world is to both bring in people who love ballet, understand it, get it, [and] to appeal to a wider audience. I want to get people into the house that might not think that ballet is for them but may just come because of the subject matter. I wanted to give people something to latch onto this year, maybe we could attract new audiences. Ghost Stories felt like a really good launching pad.
Ghost Stories will include the company’s newest world premiere, Tom Mattingly’s Nevermore. Can you share some insights on that performance?
Tom is an extremely creative individual. Nevermore will actually close out the evening. He created this with original music by Beau Kenyon, our director of education and outreach, who is also a freelance composer. They started having conversations last spring about what this score would look like and how it would take shape.
Tom has taken the life of Edgar Allan Poe at large, incorporating parts of his writings into the actual score. Sections of this ballet include “The Raven” and “The Telltale Heart” and other Edgar Allan Poe stories. At times, in the music, you will hear a speaker come through with quotes that are creating the atmosphere of Poe’s writings.
Please share the other two major pieces of Ghost Stories.
The other two ballets include one called Giselle. It’s a very famous story of a peasant girl who is betrothed to a peasant boy in town. She finds out that he has betrayed her. Her heart is broken and she goes mad.
It’s in the second act from Giselle we present. We find ourselves in a graveyard. Giselle has joined an army of Wilis — women who have been wronged by their men and died of broken hearts — who have created a community that is led by the queen of the Wilis. This is very eerie, very spooky. Seventeen pointe dancers all in white who are embodying these spirits in the graveyard.
The third work, Ghost Ballad, was created by Adriana Pierce, a freelance choreographer from New York City. This is based on works by the graveyard poets, an 18th century group of British writers who wrote very dark, reflective poems on death, mortality and the afterlife. She used these poems for these sets of dances to music by Dmitri Shostakovich, played live by the Belin String Quartet.
What else will audiences experience at Ghost Stories?
There are some exciting add-ons in the show I won’t reveal except to say that these will enhance the overall experience. Look for Haunt on the Hill performers, Dance Vision with a “Thriller” twist to the show, and Billy Weathers, artist, actor and founder of the B. Well Foundation, will provide narration throughout the performance.
Event details:
Ballet Des Moines: Ghost Stories, Hoyt Sherman Place, Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s October 2026 issue.
