In Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker, Soloist Gina Brescianini steps into the shoes of the wide-eyed Clara, rides a flying goose, saves her Nutcracker Prince and travels to the Land of Sweets.
Clara is definitely one of my all-time favourite roles. She’s bright, inquisitive and wants to be involved in everything. It’s such a joyous role. From the moment the curtain goes up, you enter the stage and dance throughout the entire ballet. I love how much dancing you do, but also how magical the production is.

The Nutcracker is a magical journey from a child-like perspective, but with a range of complicated emotions as well. For me, when the nutcracker doll wakes up I think something awakens in Clara, too. She really thinks he’s dead, but he wakes up and they dance a beautiful pas de deux together. They have a real, loving friendship. Every dancer brings their own interpretation to the role of Clara but I think when a dancer is drawing their interpretation from a real place within them, and they’re expressing that, then the audience can really connect.

Damien Welch has a penchant for villainous characters. In 2009, Damien retired from the principal ranks of The Australian Ballet. This year he returns as a guest artist to play the shadowy magician Drosselmeyer.
The key thing Peter Wright told me about Drosselmeyer was that he needed to have a particular kind of authority, so that when he makes his very first entrance he’s already commanding the room. He’s been employed to entertain the kids and adults – in other versions of The Nutcracker he’s an uncle or a friend – but in this one he’s a professional musician, entertainer and storyteller. There’s even a scene where he gets paid for his services. He’s a man of complete confidence and he’s a little bit devious as well.

I love playing characters like these, from characters like Drosselmeyer who have a sinister edge, to full-blown baddies. For me, they’re much more fun than playing the prince. Some princes are great, but villains always command respect in the way they hold themselves, that evil glint in their eye, or because they know something the other characters don’t. It’s a wonderful challenge and a satisfying feeling to portray these roles.

Robert Curran, Principal Artist of The Australian Ballet, is The Nutcracker’s Prince in pink. Every time Robert steps on stage in this magical ballet, he remembers when his career as a dancer began.
For me, the key metaphor in this role is the transition from childhood to adulthood. The role of the Prince is as much a romantic figure as he is a saviour – especially during the battle of the rats. The main challenge for a dancer performing the role of the Prince is giving the character some gravitas. You know, when he’s wearing pink for most of the ballet you don’t want to him to be a flimsy character.

Throughout my dance career, The Nutcracker has always been an inspiration. You want to be magical and technically assured so you can slot yourself into the memory of another young dancer. I remember opportunities coming my way as a young dancer where I danced The Nutcracker overseas. This ballet really makes me remember my first years with the company. It’s always an honour dancing with Lucinda Dunn, too. We have a great working relationship and bring the best out of each other. Dancing this ballet gives a real sense of achievement.

The Sugar Plum Fairy is the ballerina of Clara’s dreams. Principal Artist Lucinda Dunn also dreamed about dancing this role ever since she first slipped into a tutu. For Lucinda, hard work and determination has paid off.
The pinnacle of the second act is set in the Kingdom of the Sweets, where the Sugar Plum Fairy enters and performs the grand pas de deux with her Prince. The Sugar Plum Fairy, complete with her pink sparkly tutu, is very me; anyone who knows me knows that I love pink and sparkles. But it’s also a very challenging and long solo, and quite heavy on my legs.

Now that I have a little daughter I’ll be introducing her to the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Interestingly, during the 2007 Sydney season when I danced the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy I was pregnant – so I had my own little Sugar Plum! That actually makes this role even more special.

The Australian Ballet’s Artist in Residence Colin Peasley joined the company in its inaugural year of 1962. Since then he’s performed countless conniving villains, peculiar magicians and foppish kings. Colin plays the grandfather in this production of The Nutcracker.
A lot of dancers think that if they’re not doing five pirouettes then they’re not in a good role. But there’s a heck of a lot of satisfaction in exploring who your character is. I think about what the grandfather must have been like at the turn of the century. He sounds like he’s very proud of his family, so I try ad infuse that into the character on stage.

To colour your character, you can’t just know what he’s doing on stage but you have to know how he got on stage. What did the character have for breakfast? Why does he have this wonderful house where he’s throwing a fabulous party, and yet he’s a tottering old man who doesn’t put on any heirs and graces? I get really bound up in the story. I mean, you can walk across the stage but if you can walk across the stage with a past, present and possible future then you can bring the character to life.

The Nutcracker plays in Melbourne and Sydney in September and December

This is an edited extract from The Australian Ballet’s The Nutcracker souvenir programme, available at the theatre before performances

Image: Gina Brescianini as Clara and Damien Welch as Drosselmeyer
. Photography Jim McFarlane

Right now at the Arts Centre in Melbourne is an exhibition featuring photos and ephemera of ballet visionary Dame Peggy van Praagh. The exhibition covers the full breadth of Peggy’s career, including early charity performances at age six; performing and teaching with the Ballet Rambert, London Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Ballet; her artistic directorship of the Borovansky Ballet; and most notably her artistic directorship of The Australian Ballet.  Thanks to the Arts Centre’s Performing Arts Collection, we’ve posted a few photos from the exhibition.

The Arts Centre’s Peggy van Praagh exhibition runs until 24 September 2010

Peggy! The Australian Ballet’s season dedicated to its founding artistic director plays until Monday 5 July

Main image:Peggy van Praagh as Juno in Pas des Desses, London Ballet, Arts Theatre, London, 1939
Photograph by Anthony Gordon
Peggy van Praagh Collection Gift of The Australian Ballet, 1998
Performing Arts Collection, the Arts Centre

After dancing together for the first time, Rudolf Nureyev dropped to his knees and kissed Margot Fonteyn on the hand during the curtain call. The audience roared. From this moment, Nureyev and Fonteyn became a celebrity dance partnership. In a documentary about the couple, Nureyev said they danced with “one body, one soul”.

As part of her five point plan for The Australian Ballet, founding Artistic Director Peggy van Praagh was determined to present the world’s best dancers to Australian audiences. In 1964 she invited Nureyev and Fonteyn to dance the title roles in Giselle. Fonteyn had performed in Australia in 1957 with the Borovansky Ballet but, for Nureyev, dancing on the Australian stage was a new experience.

In an article tracing the history of international ballet dancers visiting Australia, published in The Age in 1964, Geoffrey Hutton described Nureyev and Fonteyn as: “… probably the most highly priced dancers in the world; Fonteyn the pride of the British ballet who has queened it for a generation; Nureyev the sensational young male dancer from the Leningrad Kirov who has brought a new sense of excitement into the Western ballet.”

These now ballet legends appealed to the Australian style of ballet. They were an electric couple, exuding character and precision. Fonteyn was adored for her classically English poise, grace and perfection (the kind of dancing Dame Peggy van Praagh encouraged in her Australian dancers) and Nureyev for his bawdy Russian enthusiasm and vigorous style (characteristics Australian dancers inherited from the Borovansky Ballet). Hutton writes, “At first critics noticed some differences in style … the partnership seemed oddly matched. Perhaps both dancers have benefited from it; we shall be able to form our own opinions.”

Fonteyn and Nureyev performed Giselle in Melbourne and Sydney alongside guest artists Lupe Serrano and Royes Fernandez, and members of The Australian Ballet including Kathleen Gorham, Garth Welch, Marilyn Jones and Colin Peasley. Fonteyn and Nureyev’s 1964 Australian tour went down in dance history as a milestone event. Fonteyn (age 69) and Nureyev (age 50) danced their last performance in 1988 in Baroque Pas de Trois.

Peggy!, a programme dedicated to Dame Peggy van Praagh, opens in Melbourne Friday 25 June

Image: Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn with artists of 
The Australian Ballet in Giselle, 1964. Photography – David Mist

Inspired by an ancient Greek myth, Tim Harbour’s brand-new ballet Halcyon explores weighty themes of life, death, pride, betrayal and transformation. We snuck into the studio recently to photograph rehearsals for Tim’s mainstage debut and caught up with him to find out how the work’s progressing.

Can you shed some light on Halcyon’s concept?
It’s based on a Greek myth. The allure of any Greek myth is that they’re always really simple. Even though this one is  simple, it’s been a real challenge to get across the ideas in 25 minutes. As far as the narrative goes, it’ll be far more abstracted than Coppélia for example. Loads of imagery and symbolism; they’re the mechanisms I’ll be using to drive the story. Hopefully it’ll be an emotional drama.

Your work has never really been narrative-based. It’s always been quite poetic and abstract, correct?
Yeah, I’ve always tried to have a theme or some kind of poetic idea …

So why the change?
Ah, well, you’ve got to! This is a really big opportunity for me – it might be the only time I ever do something like this. I might as well try it.  Even though this is a highly pressurised opportunity – a lot of people are going to see it; it’s The Australian Ballet, and there’s a lot of expectation – I do have the confidence of coming back to the dancers who I created my first choreographic works on. My time away has always been about coming back to this opportunity to try something bigger. So I’m confident in my cast.

When you begin the creative process, do you get the music and then start choreographing?
Normally I would, but this time I started with this concept. This time I was able to go to Gerard Brophy and say: ‘this is the idea’. We had a lot of conversations and eventually I was able to delineate six scenes for him that had fairly clear scenarios. And then I was able to do that with Alexis George, who is doing the costumes. And I was able to do that with Bluebottle, the guys doing the stage design.

So, right now you have the music – have you got the costumes ready?
They’re designed. I’ve actually got a mock up of one of the costumes. There’s this special idea I have for the storm scene. Think pants, and between the legs, all along the inside thigh is pleated material so that when the dancer lifts her leg the material makes the shape of a fan. I hope it’ll be a really fun thing to work with. I actually tried a pair on the other day and they’re a really funky look; just walking. At the moment we’re playing with materials that are going to work and deciding whether to make them out of polyester or silk. There are all these issues about colouring. Some fabrics can’t be coloured, some can’t be painted, and there are others that aren’t heavy enough or won’t last the distance of 30 shows. So there are issues everywhere … and the cost! I thought the costs would be so simple, and I think they [the wardrobe department] have a budget of about $30,000 and they’re already like, “well, I don’t think we’re going to make this under our budget – what can we cut?” It’s interesting. But, hey, it’s great to have a budget!

Edge of night plays in Melbourne and Sydney in August and November

Ty King-Wall and Madeleine Eastoe in rehearsals for Halcyon. Photography Jessica Bialek

Littlefield had been pushing ballet’s boundaries for years, but her two-act It Happens on Ice was out of the ordinary for pointe shoe purists in 1940.  After staging The Sleeping Beauty in 1937 – complete with 100 dancers and 85 musicians – she put dancers on bicycles in American Jubilee and her droll satire Ladies’ Better Dresses poked fun at America’s fashion industry.

It Happens on Ice was a commercial project for Littlefield while she took a hiatus from choreographing for American ballet companies. However, she applied the same enthusiasm to the winter spectacular as she did to her previous works. Littlefield was initially nervous about replacing dancers’ pointe shoes with ice skates in her staging of Swan Lake in the first act, and with good reason, too. She quickly realised that the combination of basic ballet steps and slippery ice could turn the dancers into a pile of fractures, dislocations and torn ligaments. Ballet positions would be lost in the whip-fast spins or, worse, enforcing the basic port de bras on an ice dancer mid-air would result in a crash landing. Littlefield made certain her dancers were conscious of elegant ballet lines, group composition, and able to adapt their spins into ballet turns and their jumps into long ballet leaps.

The second act in It Happens On Ice captured Littlefield’s knack for comedy. So What Goes, a riotous send-up about a day on the old skating pond, featured naughty boys tripping up sunny pig-tailed girls, gliding governesses and young lovers drawing a perfect figure eight. 

In his article about It Happens on Ice, Walter Terry of the New York Herald Tribune commented: “You will be convinced, I think, that Catherine Littlefield is becoming a theatre figure of the first rank, a girl who is leaving her mark in the revue, in the ballet, and on ice.” And he was right. Catherine Littlefield went on to become a pioneering force in American ballet, ice dancing, and was one of the first inductees into the Hall of Fame of the National Museum of Dance.

Image: Betty Aikinson makes a turn during the butterfly appearing in It Happens on Ice at the Radio City’s Center Theater, circa 1941

Bodytorque choreographer Damien Welch set out to create a ballet about the relationship between personality and clothing choice. “I have my own love-hate relationship with fashion”, Damien says. “Birthday Suit comes from my belief that we would be happier (and colder) if we all just stayed naked.” For fashion designer Georgia Clark, Birthday Suit gave her the perfect opportunity to observe the various ways in which people express their identities in their day-to-day existence. We caught up with Georgia to talk about her interest in industrial workwear, and the everyday things that inspire her.

Tell us about your first meeting with Damien; did you find you were on the same page in terms of creative concepts?
Damien had a clear idea of the costumes at our first meeting, I liked his ideas and we went from there.

Your designs for Bodytorque are inspired by the way everyday people express their identities through clothing. Did you conduct stealth research on Melbourne’s streets?
I wanted to know what people were wearing under their clothes. So I conducted some of my research through conversations with retail sales staff in high street stores. Department store staff members are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the current tastes and trends of all types of people.

What are some words that were flying around your head when you were designing Birthday Suit?
Movement, character, bare legs, and “how, oh how, will they move in that?”

What else are you working on outside Bodytorque?
I have been collaborating with parts of the hospitality industry designing uniforms for staff. This industry is so competitive; everyone wants to stand out from the rest, and I enjoy exploring this area of design.

Tell us a little about your graduate collection Practicality Meets Femininity …
I have always been interested in industrial workwear. I wanted to develop the idea that woman in the industrial workforce could look and feel feminine in a generally male dominated environment: a workwear range addressing woman’s curves but fit for hard yakka. I also addressed sustainability issues such as minimal fabric wastage during the cutting process.

What have you discovered about fashion since graduating?
That it’s a wonderfully creative and exciting industry to be a part of and that it’s incredibly important to stay focused.

What everyday things inspire you?
Inspiration, to me, is all around. It’s abstract, and manifests itself in all areas of my life. I see it in the not-so-spectacular; overflowing warehouses; hessian sacks; grey matter. Even day-to-day tasks like writing the address on an envelope and putting it in the postbox. Food is an inspiration, so is the changing of the seasons, nature, other people, Australiana, the art of tea-drinking, and flea markets! I love to observe others. Markets are good for that.

Walk us through your studio …
Visually, it’s a very busy place. There’s my industrial sewing machine, an iron, cutting table, scissors, tape measure, tailors’ chalk, etc. Then there are extra trimmings, a small library, a hessian sack collection, a flour bag collection, bookcases of vintage fabrics, a herb garden, music, views, pictures of gypsy women and antique maps hanging on the wall.

I rarely buy anything new, so most of my possessions have a history. I like to be surrounded with objects that have a story. I can get sidetracked by all the beautiful and interesting things I have collected over the years, but overall the space is very conducive to productivity. It’s a calm space.

What is your favourite item of clothing?
At the moment it’s an authentic woman’s inventory shirt from the Second World War. It has a very simple cut, flat- felled seams and brown Bakelite buttons. I’m a sucker for vintage labels. This one reads: V526, Made in Australia, 1942, size 13 ½. The font is so elaborate and the quality of the weave is beautiful. It’s full of history and character. It hangs in my studio and I love it.

If you could spend the day in one designer’s studio, whose would it be and why?
If I really wanted to indulge myself I would definitely choose Antonio Marras, the creative director for Kenzo. My ethos aligns with his, and I love his work, art, and nostalgic flair. I love the way he fuses the East and West; his ability to adore woman in such a creative and refined manner, and that he’s diverse and nomadic.

He spends most of his time working from his birth place in Sardinia. I like to think that because I also grew up on an island (Tasmania) that we would have a similar disposition and would get along famously! If I could speak Italian I would love to spend a day with this man in his studio on his island.

Bodytorque.à la mode plays in Sydney 27 – 30 May

Georgia Lazzaro is currently in New York on an internship with Narciso Rodriguez and Calvin Klein and Crystal Dunn works for Melbourne-based label MATERIALBYPRODUCT. Early in the year Georgia and Crystal came together to design costumes for Alice Topp’s Trace, an intimate pas de deux performed by Vivienne Wong and Calvin Hannaford for Bodytorque.à la mode. We spoke to Georgia and Crystal about how they transformed basic hosiery into costumes fit for the ballet stage.

What has it been like working as the only design duo in Bodytorque?
We’ve really enjoyed working together, and have found that our thinking has been in sync the whole way through. It has been so great to have another person to bounce ideas off and get ideas from.

Do you find your ideas complement one another?
The Trace costumes are almost a perfect intersection of our ideas and ways of thinking. We are both fascinated by gesture; the motions of garments; the actions of bodies; the way the two relate to each other. We are both very interested in the language of fashion, and in the way fashion, objects, images and events relate to the living body.

Have you worked as a partnership before?
Not really, although at uni we spent time critiquing each others’ work. We will definitely work together in the future, though!

How did you respond to Alice’s choreographic concept during the initial stages?
When we read Alice’s outline of her concept for the piece – an intimate pas de deux exploring the traces of moments and memories – we were very excited as we felt it fit so perfectly with ideas that we had already been exploring for the Bodytorque promotional images, which we styled.

We brought in a few photos and videos that we had taken and showed them to Alice, who really loved them. From the beginning, all three of us felt that the costume design was to be an integral element in the piece, rather than clothing applied at the end. So our first response was to send Alice a collection of toiles (trial garments) to start experiment with while the company was in Sydney.

The costumes you have designed almost take on their own dance vocabulary as the dancers twist, stretch and shed the fabric on stage. How did you design the pieces without seeing the dancers in action? Was this a challenge?
The costumes in Trace are everyday intimate garments – camisoles and hosiery – which are opened up with fine incisions. These incisions open up new spaces for the body, allowing the dancers to work with generic objects in fresh and dynamic ways. Because of the costume’s importance in the choreography, we worked very closely with Alice, Vivienne and Calvin. The development of the costumes was very much a process of trial and error. We attended rehearsals in order to develop the objects in tandem with the dance (which included snipping through hosiery on the floor of the ballet studios).

Because we spent time with the garments, working with our own bodies, we had some sense of how things would look. However, seeing them for the first time on Calvin and Vivienne’s bodies with Alice’s direction was incredibly rewarding. We could never have predicted just how beautifully she would respond to our initial ideas. The challenges for us were negotiating technical difficulties, as the piece was formed via the natural intersection of our visions.

One of our key technical considerations was the tenacity of the materials. As the costumes are used quite rigorously, it was important that the pieces were able to withstand the force applied to them. With this, we got so much great feedback from Alice and the dancers, allowing us to develop costumes which truly extend from and support the dancers’ bodies.

Which designers do you admire?
Georgia is inspired by designers Raf Simons, Jil Sander, Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein, Narciso Rodriguez and Helmut Lang, while Crystal is much more excited by theorists and writers, such as Roland Barthes, Gaston Bachelard and Michel de Certeau, or photographers, such as Horst P. Horst and Mark Borthwick.

What have you learned about fashion since you graduated?
That it gets more and more exciting.

What are you working on outside of Bodytorque?
Georgia is currently in New York interning with Narciso Rodriguez and Calvin Klein, while Crystal works in garment production and image-making with MATERIALBYPRODUCT.

What everyday things inspire you?
The archetypal things: a singlet, a pair of stockings, a pile of clothing on the floor, the way a bra strap slips off your shoulder. The ubiquity of these objects makes them such powerful and intimate symbols.

Beauty is …
Anything so refined it exists only as a gesture.

Bodytorque.à la mode plays in Sydney 27 – 30 May

Considered the first female dandy, the Marchesa Luisa Casati was muse to a list of painters, photographers, fashion designers, writers and European thinkers. She was photographed by Man Ray, dressed by Paul Poiret, and directly inspired Cartier’s ‘Panthere’ jewellery series. In the streets of Paris at midnight the Marchesa, with wildly teased hair and kohl-blackened eyes, could be seen taking her pet panthers for a stroll. The Marchesa Casati was – in her prime – the most scandalous and daring woman of her day. Bodytorque choreographer Timothy Brown is the latest artist to to draw inspiration from the Marchesa for his new ballet Nocturnal Phantasm. Bridie O’Leary, the costume designer for Timothy’s work, chatted to us about how she recreated the Marchesa for the ballet stage. The sketch above is from Bridie’s last millinery collection.

Tell us about the design brief that Tim gave you …
The brief was very extensive. It not only included his design brief, but  a biography on fashion muse Marchesa Luisa Casati, a detailed description of the music, and notes on his style of choreography. The general idea was to explore the eccentric, macabre and dramatic traits of  the Marchesa. The broader themes were based on the antiquity of the fashions and social high-life of the early 20th century art scene, including the artwork of Erté. The suggested colour palette included the use of monochrome greys and silvers – inspired by the silver screen – with particular attention to the textures and shine of the fabrics. Most of all, Tim wanted to create a sense of drama and tragedy.

And how have you interpreted his ideas?
Firstly, I got a hold of as much as I could on Marchesa Casati and Erté; in particular, paintings of the Marchesa and Erté’s illustrations. The idea was to represent the dramatic glamour and grotesque beauty of the Marchesa’s character that was represented in famous paintings and illustrations, and photos taken of her during her wealthy years, through to her downfall and ultimate poverty. I decided that it was imperative to emphasise the creation of the silver screen. The grey, black and silvery hues and textures would help to capture this. The dancers surrounding the Marchesa loosely reference the Belle Époque style of the period while exaggerating a kind of eeriness and keeping that neo-Gothic edge. I decided red was an excellent colour to use as a highlight not only for its striking appearance on stage but also as an ode to Marchesa’s flame-red hair. The trick was to balance the decorative and excessive qualities in the designs with a modern and minimal style … so as not to hinder the dancers, or overpower the choreography.

What did you learn about Marchesa Casati that you didn’t know before you started working on Bodytorque?
There was a story about Marchesa towards the end of her life that I came across in my research and really stuck with me. When Marchesa lost all her wealth due to her extravagant lifestyle she had to sell almost all her belongings, including all the art she had collected, to cover her enormous debt. According to this story, the Marchesa would be found roaming the streets of Paris in rags and tatters; a vision in moth eaten furs and feathers; her black-rimmed eyes darting around; her unwashed hair all dusty and grimy. She was so unrecognisable most wouldn’t have known her apart from the beggars. She would be seen in this state wandering for hours rummaging through waste, gleaning leftovers at the market. One would have thought she was looking for food. However, what she was so fervently searching for what was in fact dead roses to adorn herself with. I think that was the most poetic and beautiful thing I read about her.

You’ve had many years experience as a milliner. Do you think your work for Bodytorque is influenced by this?
Perhaps. I’ve certainly included hats in the piece. The only real aspect of millinery that is included in Nocturnal Phantasm is the sense of drama. Hats to me are all about making a statement. They complete an ensemble and highlight an element of an individual’s personality. In many ways that’s the function the hats perform in this piece.

What has it been like designing for dance?
Inspirational. Challenging at times, but mostly a really rich experience. There are a lot of new techniques that I have learnt through constructing costumes for such an intense art form.  Durability, comfort and weight are huge considerations that I have learnt a lot about. At the end of the day, though, dancers are ideal beings to dress because not only are they beautiful, toned, etc. but they also know how to use their bodies; how to move.

Talk us through a favourite piece of yours.
My favourite piece from Nocturnal Phantasm is the Marchesa’s cape. It consists of layers of black satin, silver and black lace, and soft transparent chiffon. The cape is made up of about six metres of fabric so it’s very full and drapes beautifully. The layers of fabric vary in texture (glossy, matt, transparent, metallic) and create a rich, shimmering visual. I can’t wait to see this piece on stage.

What are some words that flew around your head when designing Nocturnal Phantasm?
Delicate, swift, swathing, rich, luscious, disguise and hidden.

Walk us through your studio.
The studio space I work from is in a building at the back of where I live, so it’s conveniently close. When I’m beginning a project like this one I usually spend a month beforehand reading, collecting and researching. I keep a scrapbook of anything I find that may be relevant. I sketch, collage and experiment on a two-dimensional level. That way I can communicate my ideas easily with the client, and I can rediscover ideas when problems arise in the ‘making’ component. From here I usually do some intermediate toils to complete fittings and plunge straight into pattern-making, and construction. During the construction process, however, alterations to designs and complete reworking of certain elements can always happen. Of course, the way I work varies from project to project.

Bodytorque.à la mode plays in Sydney 27 – 30 May

Tell us about the design brief you were given for Fold …
Robert Curran spoke to me about the ideas, feelings, colours and textures of the piece. From the very start we knew the title of the work – Fold – and that it would involve an exploration of skin and the body. Bodytorque 2010 focuses on fashion so, naturally, we wanted the piece to stand alone as a product of fashion.

Your RMIT graduate work centered on ideas of covering and uncovering the body; have these ideas filtered into your Bodytorque work?
Yes, definitely. As a group of designers working on the various ballets within the programme, we all remarked how there was piece almost waiting for each of us.

What are some words that were flying around your head when you were designing this piece?
Corsets, legs, flesh.

Have you faced any challenges during the design process?
Trying to create impact that cuts across the distance between performer and spectator. Also, the subtle methods of sewing construction that needs to be incredibly robust.

What has it been like designing for dance?
Quite liberating, actually. I feel very fortunate for the opportunity to take ideas beyond, perhaps, where I would normally stop.

You recently completed an internship with luxe ready-to-wear Californian label Rodarte. What did you take away from this experience?
In terms of the city of Los Angeles, it was quite a polarising experience – of course, in a great way. In terms of Rodarte, seeing the tools and processes used to replicate something many times over, which seems innately singular, or one-off, was invaluable. Going hours out of Downtown to a NASA desert dump site to find bits and bobs for Louboutin prototypes was one of the highlights.

What else are you working on at the moment?
A Masters application for Central St Martins, London.

What themes/people/films/books/events in history inform your work?
Any old tome about couture sewing techniques, Helmut Newton’s nude series, 16th century sexually-charged Reformation painting and Twin Peaks.

What everyday things inspire you?
My fellow designers.

Walk us through your studio …
It’s currently in mine and my boyfriend’s sunroom in our house in St Kilda. It’s got a good iron which I can leave on all day, an OK sewing machine which I want to replace, and a big table that I can elevate. Our Tonkinese cat Raleigh usually keeps an eye on things.

Bodytorque.à la mode plays in Sydney 27 – 30 May

Melanie Bower has swiftly become one of Australia’s most exciting breakthrough designers. Her autumn-winter collection (pictured above), fresh off the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival runway, straddles the stylistic extremes of austerity and hedonism. For the upcoming season of Bodytorque.à la mode Melanie has designed costumes for Daniel Gaudiello’s new ballet South of Eden, a piece about female escorts working in a hotel, waiting for the right man to come along and take them away. We chatted to Melanie about what inspires her work and the experience of designing for dance.

Can you tell us a little about the work you’ve designed for Daniel Gaudiello’s South of Eden?
In keeping with Daniel’s inspiration for the piece, the costumes are very body conscious and rely heavily on textural fabrics and cut-outs to abstract and sometimes fetishise the dancers’ bodies.

What is it about the work of Helmut Newton that has inspired your designs for this ballet?
For me, Helmut Newton’s work was a great influence because of the way he explored the relationship between sex and power.

What are you hoping to bring to the ballet stage?
I hope my preoccupation with fashion will allow me to bring something fresh. If nothing else, I think, as newcomers, the costume designers for this season of Bodytorque will break conventions, because we don’t know them all!

What has it been like designing for dance?
It has been exciting and challenging. I’ve had to rely heavily on the expertise and knowledge of the amazing wardrobe department at The Australian Ballet.

Tell us about your residency at Alice Euphemia …
The residency was a fantastic opportunity given to me, along with three other graduates from RMIT, to show our work upstairs at the store in Cathedral Arcade. It’s great to be stocked at the store now, two years on.

Can you tell us a little about the collection you showed recently at L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival?
The pieces were all silk and merino wool. The silk was digitally and screen printed so they have quite an unusual texture; simultaneously soft and structured, sheer and opaque.

Are there reoccurring themes in your work?
Rather than themes, I’m interested in ongoing technical research in the aim of developing new textiles and techniques.

Does your work draw on any fascinating characters or events throughout history?
I prefer to concentrate on creating things that feel new, incorporating more abstract references like the prints from my last collection which were photographs taken by a microscope, but from a distance it just looked like gingham.

What everyday things inspire you?
The way clothes change over time and the way people adapt things. Like, a baggy pair of jeans cinched in at the waist, which end up draping really interestingly, or a beautifully stretched out neckline on an old jumper.

What have you learnt since completing your fashion studies at university?
I’ve learnt about the importance of finding the right people to work with in order to make great fashion, and to show it.

Beauty is …
… usually a fortunate accident.