NINE years have passed since artistic director David Nixon premiered his intimate dance-drama interpretation of Dracula, and it has lived as long as a vampire's fangs in the memory.

No stake through the heart could kill it, and it will haunt for longer still, now that it has returned in all-too-short revival at the outset of Northern Ballet's new autumn season.

At the time of the original production, Nixon had said his focus was on the emotion of the Bram Stoker story, rather than spectacle, but watching the 2014 version, it has to be said this Dracula is as spectacular as much as it emotional. Ali Allen's set plays a big part in that, making the vast Quarry stage and auditorium feel claustrophobic, oppressive and breathless, just as unnerving as it shoud be.

Ensemble work is kept to a minimum, only coming to the fore for Celebration ball scene scene to mark the engagement of Holmwood (Matthew Koon ) and Lucy (Antionette Brooks-Daw).

Instead, the spotlight is on the protagonists, dancing to the crepuscular, suitably Eastern European music of Alfred Schnittke, that is both strange and scary and a brilliant choice by Nixon. Indeed, you are struck again by how Dracula is his defining work; his choreography at its most breathtaking, especially for Dracula, where every shape-shifting movement Counts, excuse the pun.

Whereas American guest artist Jimmy Orrante'sDracula had something of the goth rock star about him nine years ago, Giuliano Contadini's 2014 vampire has more in keeping with the silent movie era, F W Murnau's Nosferatu et al. Part bat, part snake, he is all consuming.

Nixon's Dracula is already a triumph before it hit new heights in Dracula's seduction of Hannah Bateman's Mina Murray, to the accompaniment of Arvo Part's impossibly beautiful Spiegel im Spiegel, a pas de deux so sensuous the heart quite bursts. Do anything, bite a neck, drink blood, whatever, to secure a ticket.

Dracula, Northern Ballet, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk