AN ENCHANTING TALE
Since its world premiere in 1890, The Sleeping Beauty’s Act II Vision Scene has mesmerized audiences with its captivating musical score and delightful dancing. As the Lilac Fairy leads Prince Desire into a wooded glade, she conjures a mirage of sleeping Aurora. Shimmering woodland nymphs surround Aurora, and she instantly captures the Prince’s heart. The full charm of the Vision Scene would not be complete without its legendary nymph costumes – four of which will be created from scratch in Boston Ballet’s Costume Shop this year. Costume Shop staff Liza Dezmelyk, Becky Thorogood, Nellie Kurz, and Shane Maxwell take us behind the scenes of the process of constructing these beautiful costumes.
ARTISTIC ENGINEERING
Each new bodice takes a minimum of 30 hours to complete from the first stitch to the final fitting, and all new creations replicate David Walker’s original 1977 designs. Creating the four new bodices is an intensive process. Boston Ballet Costume Shop First Hands Dezmelyk and Kurz begin by appraising old costumes and outlining style lines using black sewing tape. Kurz compares the first outlining step to map-making. After cutting out card stock puzzle pieces of the new bodices based on the style lines, Dezmelyk and Kurz use the pieces to cut and sew together sheets of muslin. These muslin mock costumes are fitted on dancers, and then corrected based on measurements. After altering the preliminary design, the real costumes are cut from thick fashion fabric and “flat-lined” against coutil, a sturdy cotton fabric that lines most ballet costumes. Flat-lining is a typical costume-making process in which fashion fabric and coutil are sewn together and treated as one for the remainder of the creation process. Flat-lining ensures that costumes will last and that dancers feel comfortable on stage dancing. Coutil feels soft to the touch, and “has a tight weave, so it holds up pretty well,” Thorogood said. Countless dancers wear Boston Ballet costumes over time, so costumes must challenge the aging affects of sweat, stage lights, and partnering. The rest of the costumes are sewn using metallic lace, crystal sheer, and a poly blend fabric with lurex, a synthetic fabric woven with tinsel. This carefully-constructed combination gives both a glimmering appearance onstage and a longer life.
Going from a three-dimensional costume to a two-dimensional pattern outline, then back to a new three-dimensional costume, is a laborious process of deconstruction and renewal. The process is a delicate balance between engineering and artistic expression, in which traditional construction methods produce nearly identical pieces. The Boston Ballet costume shop currently works from original stock fabric from the 1970s. Once that fabric is used up, all eighteen costumes will be replaced using new material that takes advantage of advances in technology and synthetic fabric design.
