The tall, metal scaffold rises from the driveway of Lisa and David Starry’s central Phoenix home.

As the early afternoon sun beats down on the concrete drive, eight young men ascend the 15-foot structure for another day’s work.

Muscles flex. Sweat builds. Music blares.

This isn’t a construction site — it’s a temporary rehearsal space. And the young men are practicing a dance number for the premiere of Scorpius Dance Theater’s new, Halloween-themed show, “A Vampire Tale,” which opens Wednesday.

A driveway in the Valley sunshine seems like an improbable place to rehearse a show about night-loving vampires, but the scaffold can’t be moved into Phoenix Theatre Little Theater until a day before the production opens.

“We have nowhere to put it,” says Lisa Starry, Scorpius’ artistic director. As a result, Starry and her dancers have been practicing outside two times a week.

The situation is far from ideal: Starry’s been pelted with bird droppings while giving notes. And the scaffold upset her neighbors, who complained about it to the city.

She and her husband avoided a fine and “wrote a nice, friendly letter to the neighbors explaining what it’s used for and that it’ll be down in two weeks,” Starry says. “It freaked the neighbors out with all these dancers climbing and playing music and stuff.”

Starry has always loved vampires and dreamed of someday making a vampire movie.

But that’s a little hard to do, she says. So she scaled down her dream and teamed up with local playwright Raymond King Shurtz and guest choreographer Sheryl Cooper — wife of Valley rocker Alice Cooper — and cooked up “A Vampire Tale.”

The Gothic, modern dance production will feature a mix of original music composed by Ryan Breen and hard industrial tracks by well-known artists, including Nine Inch Nails.

Scorpius Dance Theater will be the first professional dance company to perform a large show in the newly renovated Phoenix Theatre Little Theater, Starry says. Most other dance companies avoid the venue because of its small stage — 40 feet wide and 24 feet deep — and limited seating.

“It only seats 100,” Starry says. “That’s why we’re doing 10 shows.”

Starry believes the intimate space will help to set the production’s dark, intense tone.

“I want the audience, as soon as they walk in, to feel like they’re in this vampire world. We’re going to have this strange gallery of photos as they first enter. And there’ll be tons of gobo lighting so they feel like they’re walking into a tomb.”

Starry hopes that the production will build up an annual following, like the devotion cult film fans show to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“I’m hoping that ‘Vampire’ might be Scorpius’ version of ‘Nutcracker,’ ” she says.

“It’s got that Goth look. And that’s what I want to attract,” Starry says. “People who like dark stories. All the vampires out there.”