NEW YORK – Ballerina vampire.

Even if you have not seen Abigail, the gore-fest film showing in Singapore cinemas, you can probably picture the monster of its title – the fangs, the blood-spattered white tutu.

However unlikely Abigail – the bloodthirsty child dancer played by 14-year-old Irish actress Alisha Weir – seems, she has a long pop-culture lineage.

Ballerinas are almost as much of a staple in horror as vampires. For decades, film and television have mined drama from the idea of the ballerina whose onstage elegance conceals terrible darkness – from 1948 classic The Red Shoes to pulpy 2020 Netflix series Tiny Pretty Things.

Sometimes, that drama is anchored in the truths of ballet life: the pursuit of impossible perfection, the bodily sacrifice required by a physical art. But sometimes, these stories lean on the broadest cliches, using ballet as a beautiful canvas to spatter with blood.

Abigail is not the only dangerous ballerina of the moment.

Casting is about to begin for a workshop of a new musical based on the movie Black Swan (2010), whose disturbed, self-destructive anti-hero played by American actress Natalie Portman embodies many of the gothic ballet genre’s stickiest stereotypes.

Unlike Black Swan, the darkly funny Abigail – which follows a band of kidnappers as they discover that their prisoner, supposedly an adolescent ballet student, is actually a centuries-old vampire – does not aim for profundity.

In an interview, its American directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett described ballet dancers as masters of a kind of deception.

“They’re dedicated, strong-willed and powerful,” Gillett, 42, said. “And they know how to hide all of that.”

Like many ballet thrillers, Abigail also riffs on the repertoire classic Swan Lake. Once Abigail goes full vampire, she wears a white-feathered tutu, and you know she is coming when you hear Tchaikovsky’s swan theme.

His evocative, familiar Swan Lake score is at least partly to blame for horror’s ballet fixation – its plaintive oboe and shimmering harp offer all the dramatic tension a director could need.

American actress and former professional ballet dancer Sarah Hay, who played damaged ballet ingenue Claire Robbins in the 2015 miniseries Flesh And Bone, drew from her experiences while shaping the character.

“There are things that have happened in ballet’s recent history that are disturbing and dark,” she said. “I was highly critical of my own body; I had low self-esteem; I struggled with self-hatred, just like Claire. I could see myself in that character.”

Abigail, frankly, is not interested in ballerina psychology. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett said ballet started out as a kind of window dressing in the film – a “memorable visual flavour”, as Bettinelli-Olpin described it.

“We loved the idea of this innocent-looking ballerina covered in blood, so that every time the camera cuts to her, you’re like, ‘Oh, right – I’m in this movie’,” the 46-year-old said.

That changed after they cast Alisha as Abigail.

Alisha – who starred in 2022 movie Matilda The Musical – is a gifted mover, with training in contemporary and jazz dance. Before filming began, she took a ballet crash course with choreographer Belinda Murphy, who taught Alisha the rudiments of dancing in pointe shoes and shaped the extended ballet sequence that opens the film.

Alisha’s talent and enthusiasm inspired the Abigail team to feature dance more prominently.

“By the time we went into filming, we were trying to incorporate dance into everything Abigail was doing,” Alisha said. “When she attacked someone, it would be balletic; it would be graceful. It’s a game to her. You can tell she loves a good show.”

Abigail also inevitably brings to mind 2022’s hit M3GAN, another campy horror film featuring a dancing girl-who-is-not-a-girl. Both Abigail and the robotic doll M3GAN are performative killers, using dance to keep their victims watching even as they hunt them.

“We are very open to the Abigail-versus-M3GAN universe,” Gillett said with a laugh.

The way Abigail uses ballet evolves over the course of the movie. Before her bloody secret is revealed, ballet is meant to code her as young, innocent and an easy mark. One of the kidnappers sneeringly refers to her as “Angelina Ballerina”.

After she enters vampire mode, it becomes an exultant expression of power. Alisha’s technique may not be professional-grade and her tutu may be ripped and bloodied, but by the end of Abigail, her triumphant, unbridled dancing captures something true about why ballet dancers love ballet.

As Abigail pirouettes down the hallway after a victim, there it is, finally: a ballet dancer having fun on-screen. NYTIMES

• Abigail is showing in cinemas.