19 February 2010
By Isabel Dunstan
filed under Costume, Fashion
“Bodymap,” dancer and choreographer Michael Clark says, “is trying to do the same kind of thing I’m trying to do with classical ballet, but with design – taking very basic design and trying to look at it in a different way.” FOLLOW ME Magazine, August 1987.
Classical ballet was in for a shock when the baby-faced “Nijinsky with a Mohawk” Michael Clark, the enfant terrible of ballet, collaborated with David Holah and Stevie Stewart, designers of Central Saint Martin’s most forward-thinking label Bodymap.
In the 1980s, ballet was gripped at the throat by the anarchic youth culture of sex, fashion and performance art. It wasn’t just the look of the dancers that changed but the feel and sound of ballet as well. Clark enlisted the help of avant-garde performance artist Leigh Bowery and live music by post-punk groups in the London scene: Wire, The Fall and Laibach.
In Clark’s large-scale production No Fire Escape in Hell (1986) dancers wore hand-printed, buttock-baring unitards with batwing sleeves and strapped-on rubber appendages from sex shops. Leigh Bowery – a magnificent sight in ten-inch heels – wielded a chainsaw.
Ballet once again had influence on the catwalk. Clark regularly performed at Bodymap and Vivienne Westwood fashion shows, and in film clips. In Scritti Politti’s clip for ‘Wood Beez (Pray like Aretha Franklin) 1985’, Clark performs clad head-to-toe in Bodymap. Youth culture penetrated ballet and it never looked so good.
Michael Clark pushes the boundaries of ballet to this day; the collaborators have changed, the music is different, but the spirit of style, design and anarchy live on.
Mia Veur is a freelance womenswear buyer and stylist
17 February 2010
By Annie Carroll
filed under Coppélia, Costume
Gene Kelly is standing in the wardrobe department of The Australian Ballet Centre. So are Isadora, Juliet and Princess Buttercup. They’re all mannequin dummies named by the chortling group of seamstresses. Each is adorned with one of the exquisite costumes Kristian Fredrikson designed for George Ogilvie’s 1979 production of Coppélia. It is an important historical production for The Australian Ballet; Ogilvie’s insights combined with Dame Peggy Van Praagh’s choreography and Fredrikson’s genius result in a superlative production of the ballet. This year, The Australian Ballet will try Coppélia on for size once again, first with a season in Sydney in May, then Melbourne in June.
The stuffy hot air outside the Arts Centre one January morning is thick with the smell of approaching rain, and Melbourne is a swamp of sweaty businessmen and clammy café workers. But inside The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre, a cool and collected Michael Williams, head of the Wardrobe Department, takes me through the hundreds of Coppélia costumes being picked, tucked and stitched. There is barely a moment to waste as the department works frantically on preparing not only Coppélia, but also the equally mammoth The Silver Rose. It quickly becomes apparent that Gene Kelly and Princess Buttercup are here to keep the smiles coming and frowns at bay.
Fredrikson’s Coppélia costumes were created over 30 years ago in a canvas goods factory off Racecourse Road. Today they are undergoing an extensive restoration process. Layers of silk, lace, tulle and taffeta are flopped over chairs and big worktables. It’s a scene with all the flurry and adornment of a Parisian atelier. Many of the costumes are being remade or restored. Rotting silk on jackets must be replaced then dyed to match the older, harder-wearing silks. Saggy tutu skirts need a lift, and Swanhilda receives a new Act 3 Wedding tutu that looks like it’s been plucked straight from a Christian Lacroix runway show. The ‘Reaper Boys’ trousers require a total remake. With the original fabric no longer stocked, wardrobe has found a remarkable look-alike solution: cotton waffle-weave blankets. There is no waste as each unused costume is pillaged for its healthy trimmings, which are then used on new costumes. The wardrobe department looks like a beautiful and fantastical hospital. Costumes on the brink of death are brought back to life with a lot of care and a lot of thread. Read the rest of this entry »
15 January 2010
By Anna Sutton
filed under Ballets Russes, Costume, Fashion
When the Ballets Russes boarded Le Train Bleu (The Blue Train) in 1924, the quintessentially modern Coco Chanel was the perfect choice as costumier. Her simple, spirited designs provided a carefree invocation of seaside, active chic at a time when sportswear was a relatively new category of clothing. Le Train’s cast of wayfaring sporting champions (including a golfer inspired by the Princes of Wales) and ladies of leisure spun a seaside pantomime out of a gymnastic-classical ballet tightrope. Their costumes – black tank bathing tops, striped wool jerseys, culottes and muted tunic dresses accessorised with bathing caps like nubile petals – reflected the spirit of a libertarian age. The influence of Coco Chanel’s designs in her penultimate production for Russes are echoed today in Chanel’s 2010 Resort collection.
Le Train Bleu takes place amidst the French Riviera circa 1920s, an era where populist visions of a modernist utopia gave rise to the cult of the body beautiful. Choreographer Bronislava Nijinska satirised this shift towards shallower lifestyles using Chanel’s sporting ensembles as a fashion conduit. Indeed legend has it that Coco was credited with making suntans fashionable in Europe, following a run-in with the sun while yachting on the Riviera.
Le Train was a definitively Russes collaboration, with Jean Cocteau as librettist and Pablo Picasso fulfilling the rather specific role of curtain painter. Jean Cocteau envisaged the ballet as a series of vignettes filled with all the things you might see on the front of a postcard sent from France circa 1924 (jets falling out of the sky, maillots, chorus lines, movie cameras). When I think of Le Train Bleu I imagine rosy women and men with shoulders like boulders racing seaside together, trying to catch the first wave of salacious gossip as it crashes and breaks onto the shore…
In 2009 Karl Lagerfield kept the Ballet-Fashion dream alive by designing the costume for English National Ballet’s Elena Glurdjidze’s performance of The Dying Swan.
13 January 2010
By Lorelei Vashti
filed under Costume, The Silver Rose
The Silver Rose, 2010’s highly-anticipated curtain-raiser, is a lavish ballet that exudes opulence and style. We spoke to Tony award-winning set and costume designer Roger Kirk, whose previous work includes musicals and opera such as Dusty, The Boy from Oz and Opera Australia’s Manon, about what it’s like to bring the ballet home to Melbourne.
Is this the first time you’ve worked with Graeme Murphy?
No, I did a ballet with Graeme for The Australian Ballet called Meander, but that was about 20 years ago. So it had been a while.
What is the background to your involvement in The Silver Rose?
I’d actually just done a production of the opera Der Rosenkavalier for the Wellington Festival a few years earlier, so I was already familiar with the story. Graeme came over and explained that he wanted to set this ballet at the turn of the century, so he already had that sort of image of what he wanted to do. And after a little bit of discussion I threw a few ideas at him, and that’s sort of how it kicked it off.
What was your main inspiration for the set design?
About six months before Graeme approached me to do the ballet, I had been to Hungary and I’d stayed at the Four Seasons Gresham Palace Hotel in Budapest. It was an Art Nouveau palace that had been converted into a hotel. The entrance foyer had this glass roof over it and I went: ‘Wow! This is a fabulous set!’ And so when Graeme said ‘Art Nouveau’, I said, ‘That’s my inspiration!’ Read the rest of this entry »
6 January 2010
By Vicki Car
filed under Costume, Swan Lake
I have discovered that swans use a lot of glitter. And a very particular sort of glitter at that: very, very fine bright white glitter that sticks to everything and can be found in all sorts of interesting places at the end of the day.
We refurbished Swan Lake recently for the Perth season and although the show is in quite good condition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it has been on tour every year since it was made in 2002. The headdresses are very stylised, with two pieces of thermoplastic shaped to represent a wing and a tail. The girls pin them into their hair either side of their French rolls and originally they were painted with white opalescent paint and finished off with glitter at the base of each piece. It was only when we resprayed one did we realise how brown they were! I guess it’s down to the stage lighting that we had no idea; during the performances they looked beautiful. Close up however the poor swans were looking a little worse for wear, not quite as sparkly as they had been and rather like they had been swimming in a murky pond.
Kate my fearless and trusty assistant had no idea what l was letting her in for when we talked about bringing them up to scratch. For days we were lost in a haze of glitter, spray paint and PVA glue like drag queens at the Mardi Gras. But finally they were done, resprayed, reglittered and packed into their boxes for their journey to Perth.
Ready, as Betty Pounder used to say on opening nights, to “Sparkle, Darlings”.
Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake is available to purchase on DVD from The Australian Ballet Shop
26 October 2009
By Anna Sutton
filed under Costume
Ballet and fashion are timeless partners and this spring the pairing was no more apparent than at New York Fashion Week, Spring/Summer 2010. Pastel and nude shades, romantic shapes and delicate fabrics mingled with theatrical elements to create wearable fashions, inspired by ballerinas in their various guises.
Rachel Antonoff transformed the Henry Street playhouse on the unofficial opening night of NYFW using a playful vintage aesthetic. Models, who included ballerinas and performers, acted out ‘parts’ in what resembled a 1940s small-town variety show meets A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ethereal creatures in demure ensembles comprising tutus, ballet slippers, Albertus Swanepoel crowns, floral frocks and ice-cream-coloured dresses flitted through the golden cardboard trees and swing sets of the ‘Enchanted Forest’ and the ‘Disenchanted Forest’.
Designer Malan Breton, himself a former dancer, sent dapper, high-sheened ballerinas (Audrey Hatch, Brittany Franklin, and Kevin Wiltz) dancing down the runway to the sounds of a 30-piece orchestra at the Metropolitan Pavilion for his collection. The show was inspired by the Karin Pritzel photograph Flight of Freedom featuring Breton’s muse Leigh Alderson and evoked the silk-and-satin regality of a ballet opening. Read the rest of this entry »
7 October 2009
By Isabel Dunstan
filed under Costume
Eye-shadow, false lashes and blush are standard elements in a dancer’s pre-performance routine. There are some characters, however, that invite extreme applications of make-up to aid their transition from rehearsals to the stage.
Take for example Bronze Idol (above) in La Bayadère in which the male dancer is covered in gold make-up to resemble a statue reminiscent of the Hindu God, Shiva. One can only imagine the amount of cotton buds required to remove said make-up! Likewise, the evil sorcerer von Rothbart from the traditional Swan Lake uses make-up to accentuate sharp cheekbones and menacing eyes.
In classics like Giselle and Swan Lake, Queen of the Wilis and the swans must appear pale and ethereal to accurately execute their characters. In an article published by The Daily Telegraph, Derek Deane, creative director of the English National Ballet from 1993 to 2001, was appalled when dancers returned from their summer break in every shade of pink, red and brown. He ordered his dancers to stay indoors and stop sunbathing, but ultimately stage make-up such as ‘pancake’ would have covered and returned dancers to paler skin tones.
In The Australian Ballet’s recent performance of The Sleeping Beauty, make-up was one of many costuming techniques used to bring Carabosse, and her evil attendants from the ‘winter world’, to life. Their vindictive natures were emphasised with dark features, and were further enhanced by a chilling canvas of white faces.
Marissa Shirbin was a dancer, is now a romancer and an editorial assistant at Right Angle Publishing
21 August 2009
By Isabel Dunstan
filed under Concord, Costume
When Concord photo blogger Teagan stepped inside the domain of The Australian Ballet’s set and costume masterminds, she discovered a world of manneqins, fabric rolls and countless sketches of visionary promise. In the lead up to Concord, designers stitched, snipped, glued and assembled, adding colour, light and shade to three stunning works.
11 August 2009
By Vicki Car
filed under Concord, Costume
The new designs for the Concord season are in, and Millinery is a very happy department. After the hard slog of refurbishing Nutcracker it is nice to be making a show, or rather two, from scratch. Both new ballets have visiting choreographers and designs have been signed off relatively late in the day, but what is making us really happy is the differences between them.
For Scuola di Ballo we are working with our trusted friend Hugh Colman, whose designs are always a joy to make. This time around we are blocking felt tricorns for policemen and making an exaggerated frilled bonnet for Lucrezia, as well as earrings for the girls and a few shoe buckles for the boys. Although not historically accurate, the designs have taken their inspiration from the 18th century, which is a maker’s delight with its wonderfully rich fabrics and fantastic shapes. As far as the making goes, we are using traditional materials and techniques that milliners have used for decades. So often we are pushing boundaries with the materials we use, and how we use them, that it’s always lovely to hand-block a tricorn brim or make a silk bow. Hugh has chosen wonderful warm colours and l have no doubt the piece will be beautiful on stage.
Dyad 1929, designed by Moritz Junge, is another thing entirely. It’s a very modern piece, with designs based in geometric shapes and strong angles. A single pair of wings has sent me running into the arms of prop maker Al Martinez. At his fantastic studio l have played with angle grinders, drills and linishers, and heated, hammered and shaped steel in the forge, all the while being lucky enough to have Al share his vast knowledge with me, quietly and gently become a mentor. The wings will look like amazing (I hope!), and what l have learned in the process will be invaluable to me in the future.
One of the things l love most about my job is being surrounded by such cleverness and skill. When that cleverness and skill is so willingly shared it makes me wonder how l could ever do anything else.
Photography by Teagan Glenane
7 August 2009
By Anna Sutton
filed under Concord, Costume
As I wander through the wardrobe department, I get a strong sense of the intuitive ability behind Hugh Colman’s costume designs for Scuola di ballo. While I am mesmerised by the huge rolls of gelati-coloured tulle with names like Apple Green and American Beauty, it is his insights on the design process that have my mind unfurling.
Hugh’s initial inspiration was the Carlo Goldioni play on which Scuola di ballo is based. He feels that its 17 characters are not limited to commedia dell’arte caricatures but resemble “real middle-class Italians” as depicted by Italian painter Pietro Longhi. The music also gave him ideas for the production’s colour palette and comic flavour. “The music for this one is interesting because although it’s Boccherini tunes from the 18th century, the arrangement giving it its texture and mood is by Jean-Francaix, a 1930s composer. The music sets my imagination going.”
The design reveals influences from both these eras, and what Hugh calls ‘”the X or Alexei factor.” Hugh knew the characters wouldn’t truly materialise until the recent start of rehearsals. He likens Alexei Ratmansky’s choreography to his design, in that they both reinvent the classic forms and shape them using humour and irony. The comedic element is supported by this contrast. “The comedy will come out of the costumes being more 18th century than contemporary because if you’re in an 18th century costume doing contemporary movements, that’s inherently somehow funnier.” Read the rest of this entry »
