Giselle on stage

Giselle: Brent Whitney as Albrecht,  Nadia Drake as Myrtha
(photo credit Johann Studier) 

Here are photos (taken by Johann Studier) of Giselle on stage:
The role of Giselle was beautifully performed by Beth Mochizuki, curently a dancer with State Street Ballet in Santa Barbara California. Beth was a graceful Giselle and her mad scene was very well done. Her pointe work (which is very challenging in this role) was feather light yet strong.
Brent Whitney was exciting and masterful as Albrecht, Giselle's suitor. He filled the stage with his presence and his jumps were effortless.  Beth and Brent worked very well together and gave a top notch performance

Beth Mochizuki as Giselle, Brent Whitney as Albrecht
(photo credit Johann Studier) 

Nadia Drake, long time principle of the Ithaca Ballet, was exceptional in her role as Myrtha.  Nadia has wonderful stage presence in all her roles but seemed especially strong in this one. She was forceful and imposing as the Queen of the dead maidens, and woe to any man who came across her path! At the same time, when she was dancing her initial solo as Myrtha, it was possible to see who the woman she (Myrtha) might have been before she was jilted and died herself: soft, vulnerable and in love. Nadia's performance was memorable and very striking.

Giselle: Nadia Drake as Myrtha
(photo credit Johann Studier)

Ithaca Ballet Giselle: The Wilis, with "Furies" on left and right
(photo credit Johann Studier) 

The Wilis were performed by the Ithaca ballet's corp de ballet.  A good corps de ballet moves together uniformly, with arms, legs and heads moving as one. The dancers gave a very cohesive performance. It really was a shame that the performance was so poorly attended because to see something of this level and quality one would have had to travel to a much larger town.

Ithaca Ballet Giselle: Myrtha and her Wilis
(photo credit Johann Studier) 

How it all started: Giselle

How it all started: Giselle
People have asked me how I got started with costuming. Like most mother's my first tutus were made for E13 who started ballet at 5. As she moved up and began performing more, I volunteered back-stage and before I knew it I was making more and more elaborate items.
The first real ballet I ever was fully involved in was Giselle. Talk about jumping in the deep end with boots and all!
Giselle is the ballet's equivalent to Hamlet, the great Romantic ballet. It is also one of the so-called "white" ballets, because the dancers are for a large part dressed in ghostly white costumes.

Beth Mochizuki as Giselle, with Johann Studier as Hillarion

As with many ballet's of this era and genre, Giselle is the story of a beautiful, innocent peasant girl who lives near a forest. One day a young noble man (or prince) called Albrecht is out hunting with his buddies and meets Giselle. They fall in love, although it is not totally clear how honorable Albrecht's intentions are.
Giselle peasant suitor Hillarion, sees them, and fights with Albrecht but is sent away.
After Giselle and Albrecht have vowed their undying love for each other, Albrecht's fiance Bathilde, her father and the rest of the court come on the scene. Giselle realizes she has been duped, goes mad and either dances herself to death or commits suicide (this is a little murky).
The second act of the ballet takes place in the grave yard in the woods. Local legend says that girls who die before their wedding (or die by suicide) roam the earth at night, searching for men to take revenge on. Their queen, Myrtha, rules her maiden's called Willis and sends them after unsuspecting men who are foolish enough to go into the forest at night. Myrtha is also supposed to be a women duped by her lover and either a suicide, or someone who died of a broken heart (the Romantics truly beileve that people could die from their emotions).
Giselle's peasant suitor Hillarion makes the mistake of visiting her grave after the sun has gone down. Hillarion is discovered by Myrhta and her Willis and is made to dance till he dies. Albrecht too goes to visit Giselle's grave and would have met the same fate where it not for Giselle protecting him. He survives and at the breaking of the dawn, Giselle goes back into her grave never to be seen again.
For this ballet Scott Dolphin and I were responsible for the design and creation of all the "white" Romantic tutus: Giselle, Myrtha (the Queen of the Willis or dead girls) and the Willis.
Scott Dolphin (www.scottdolphinstudio.com) made lovely designs for the costumes using flesh colored powernet covered in white sparkle organza. He simulated vines on the bodices by sandwiching iron-on interfacing between the organza and powernet. The tutu's were three layers of smocking pleated bridal tulle in white, glimmer white and toast, sewn to a quilted basque of powernet and organza.

Cutting layers of white bridal illusion for top layers

Cutting six yards of toast colored tulle for middle layers

The middle, toast colored layer was six yards fabric, railroad cut (i.e. cut as one long piece). The other layers were cut as three or four pieces which were then sewn together.
Working with tulle is hard: it is slippery, gets statically charged easily and you cannot pin it or draw on it to cut it straight. To be able to smocking pleat it, it has to be rolled onto a special dowel and then fed into the pleater, which is cranked by hand. Scott can up with some very clever ways of dealing with these issues. He devised a method of taping the tulle onto a table using painters tape and later rolling the tulle around a metal layer so that it could be cut straight and dagged if necessary.
After the tulle was rolled, the rolls were taped again and then could be pleated.

Cut and hemmed layers of tulle ready for pleating

Rolling tulle in preparation for pleating

Rolled tulle, basques and beginnings of Romantic tutus

 I owned a smocking pleater and was going to be sewing up the tutus.  Carrie Lampman, a then high school student, wanted to learn how to make tutus so she volunteered to be my assistant. Carrie is extremely talented and learned the whole process very quickly. For this project I had two other volunteers who came and helped as well.
I measured up the dancers, then drew sixteen basque pattern and cut them out. Carrie, Lydia, Shushang and I sewed and quilted the basques.

Quilted flesh colored Powernet and white organza basques

Smocking pleated light gold tulle layer pinned to basque

Later the four of us took turn pleating, steaming and then sewing the tutus together. Shushang had never used a sewing machine before but she did great. The final assembly, was done by Carrie and myself. Scott created all the bodices and Myrtha's headpiece. I made also created two hats: one for Bathilde (Albrecht's fiance) and one for a lady in her retinue.

My assistant Carrie Lampman sewing a Giselle tutu

completed Willy tutu

Bathilde's headpiece was to simulate the elaborate hair taping that was common in the Italian Renaissance. I used bias cut strips of velvet in colors to match Bathilde's dress (hunter green, golden mustard yellow and burgundy red), which I braided into a 3/4 circlet. The back of the headpiece was a gold, jeweled snood. I embroidered the head piece with flower-shaped sequins and pearls.
The court ladies' hat was a flat-cap shaped black velvet hat with white ostrich plumes held onto the hat with an embellished pieces of hand crochet lace.
Unfortunately, I do not have any photographs of these two headpieces.
The show itself was extremely well but sadly it was not well attended making it unlikely that the ballet will stage it again. Photos of Giselle on stage will be in another post

The Sleeping beauty awakes: creating a new ballet

Johann Studier and Beth Mochizuki rehearse the Rose Adagio

For the 2010-2011 season, Ithaca Ballet, was to stage a full length Sleeping Beauty for the first time (see this article).
Sleeping Beauty is one of the more popular and challenging ballets, with several acts.
Staging  a ballet of this size requires a huge amount of work by the choreographer, artistic director, set designers, costume designers, costumers, stage crew and dancers.
Scott Dolphin (www.scottdolphinstudio.com) took charge of the shows overall costume design because he had the most experience and expertise in this area. He contacted Cornell's theater department and arranged the rental of several gorgeous costumes for the King, Queen and courtiers.

Count and Countess costume

I together with my assistant Carrie set to work making a very large number of new tutus (24), refurbishing some of the existing tutus (4) and Carrie sewed prince Florimund's coat from a design Scott made.

Sleeping Beauty Act 1 Waltz costume

The wardrobe mistress began collecting existing costumes and sewing new costumes for the Act 1 Waltz and new bodices for the vision scene.

The ballet begins with a prologue in which there are several solos for Fairies who come to give gifts at the Christening of the Princess Aurora. For most of these we used existing costumes. For Crystal Fountain fairy we used the Dew Drop bodice and a Raymonda tutu. Fairy of the Enchanted garden was dressed in the Sugar Plum fairy costume and Fairy of the Woodland Glade wore the a Nutcracker Waltz of the Flowers demi-solists costume.

 Sleeping beauty: refurbished Golden Vine, Crystal Fountain fairy, Enchanted garden Fairy, Woodland glade Fairy

For the Fairy of the Golden Vine, we used the Nutcracker's Ballerina doll tutu which I refurbished

 Old Golden Vine tutu before refurbishment, it also doubles as Nutcracker's ballerina doll tutu

 by adding several additional layers of hand dyed tutu net. I also added a double hand pleated top layer of green embroidered mirror organza decorated with hand-made golden leaf and vine appliques. This top layer was tacked on as a plate so that it could later be removed when the tutu needed to be used for Nutcracker.
I later created a matching bodice in mustard yellow velvet with a jacquard inset, with hand-made gold leaf vine appliques, green mirror organza leaves and a headpiece with several appliques and leaves sewn to horsehair braid.

Sleeping beauty: refurbished Fairy Goldenvine tutu with new bodice

An evil Fairy, Carabosse, appears with her retinue and curses the baby princess. The good Lilac fairy appears (with her six attendants) and changes the spell.

 Carabosse's dress was a dress created by my mother and then altered for the dancer.

Carabosse, the evil fairy, Ithaca ballet Sleeping beauty

Scott created the design for Carabosses's new dress, and the costumes for her attendants.

Scott also created a new bodice and plate and refurbished the head piece for the Lilac Fairy while I made a new Lilac fairy tutu and six new tutus for the attendants.

four of the six Lilac Fairy attendants tutus ready for tacking

sewing layers of hand dyed tutu net to pants

The attendants wore bodices made for Raymonda. Scott hand dyed the pants and many of the layers of netting lilac for me and I mixed tulle in rose pink, lilac and periwinkle to create the right shading of the tutus.

Lilac fairy tutu with a lilac attendant bodice

The bodice and basque were made of a lilac velveteen, six of the nine layers of the tutu were double hand pleated and the top layer was triple hand pleated.

Ithaca ballet Sleeping beauty: Lilac fairy (design Scott Dolphin) and two attendants, tutus by Hilary Sharp

During act 1 of the ballet, it is the princess Aurora's sixteenth birthday. There is a large birthday party with her parents, friends, courtiers, towns people and several suitors in attendance. It is also the day that Carabosse's spell was said to come true. The local peasants dance a flower waltz; Aurora's friends dance and the four suitors dance the famous Rose Adagio with Aurora. It is called the Rose adagio because each suitor hands her a rose.

Beth Mochizuki as Aurora in act 1 of Sleeping beauty

For this act, Scott created a beautiful silk velvet bodice for Aurora, a plate and a headpiece. I created a pink tutu with several shades of pink netting and tulle and a top layer of pink sparkle netting.
At the end of Act 1, Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle and everyone falls asleep. The Lilac fairy and her attendants come to put everyone to sleep and a huge wall of thorns grows up.
One hundred years later, Prince Florimund is in the forest hunting with his retinue. The Lilac fairy appears to him and shows him a vision of a beautiful sleeping princess, with whom he dances.

Scott Dolphin still sewing on the day of the performance

Ithaca ballet sleeping beauty, tutus by Hilary Sharp, photo by Johann Studier,

For this scene my assistant Carrie and I created 12 Romantic length, Williamsburg blue tutus which were worn as over skirts over the old snow tutus. The wardrobe mistress created 12 bodices. On the day of the performance, we also made 12 small headpieces for the dancers by ironing Wonder-under (tm) onto some metallic flower fabric and sewing/gluing ribbon to this with silver fabrics flowers and Swarovski crystals on to them.
My assistant Carrie Lampman created prince Florimund's velvet hunting vest after a scetch and pattern made by Scott.

Brent Whitney as Prince Florimund, coat design Scott Dolphin, made by Carrie Lampman

 After Prince Florimund see the sleeping Aurora, he awakens her with a kiss.
The final act of the ballet is often called Aurora's wedding is is sometimes performed as a short ballet.
During the wedding scene, many story book characters come to visit including the White Cat and Puss in Boots, Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, along with Jewels (Diamond, Silver, Gold and Sapphire) and Princess Florine and her Bluebird.
For Act three,  I: 1) refurbished the Red Riding Hood tutu with a new top layer

 Red Riding hood before refurbishment

Refurbished Red Riding Hood tutu

2) made new tutus for three of the jewels: Diamond, Silver and Gold and refurbished the Sapphire with a new top layer. All the new tutus had 5 layers of double hand-pleated, hand dyed tutu net or a mixture of tulle. The Diamond tutu had layers of pale blue tulle added in and had a sparkle tulle top layer. The Silver tutu was graded shades of platinum, silver, and graphite glimmer tulle, hand-dyed deep pearl grey pants and lower layers of tutu net and had a double hand pleated top layer of black glimmer tulle and silver sparkle tulle. The Gold tutu was graded shades of antique gold, lemon yellow, and gold tulle, hand dyed layers of golden yellow tutu net and a double hand pleated top layer of gold sparkle netting. The top plate-like layer on the Sapphire tutu consisted of two layers of double hand-pleated  silver sparkle tulle, royal blue, Williamsburg blue and jewel blue tulle.

 Sleeping Beauty Act 3: New Diamond, Silver and Gold tutu and a refurbished Sapphire tutu, tutus by Hilary Sharp

3) Re-beaded the Blue bird's jacket and refurbished Princess Florine's bodice and tutu by rebeading the decorations and adding several layers of fresh tutu net and a double hand pleated plate style top-layer of Royal blue, Williamsburg blue and jewel toned tulle. The dancer added feathers, made a new feather headpiece and arm bands herself.

re-beaded Princess Florine bodice

refurbished Florine tutu

Sleeping beauty: Refurbished Blue bird and Princess Florine, Aurora's wedding Act 3

Scott made a new bodice and plate for the White Cat and we used our new Dew Drop tutu. Scott made Puss in Boots new breeches, I knitted the tail out of rust colored fun fur and Scott ordered all the masks. Finally Scot and I made new costumes for Prince Florimund and Aurora. Scott designed and created Prince Florimund's coat, Aurora's bodice and plate. I created the tutu. It was completed double hand pleated white tutu net, with pale pink tulle "sandwich" layers with an off white velvet basque and bodice. The lace on the bodice and the plate was a re-embroidered bridal lace with Swarovski crystals and pearls with additional hot-fix crystals added on.

Ithaca ballet sleeping beauty: Aurora Act 3 bodice
design by Scott Dolpin

sleeping beauty: Aurora act 3 (Aurora's wedding) tutu

The tiara was purchased.
The production as a whole was simply stunning and a testament to what a small (town) ballet company can achieve when it puts all its talented people to work together. Something of this size cannot be done by one or two people but has to be a true team effort, with everyone contributing.

Sleeping beauty: Beth Mochizuki as Aurora, Brent Whitney as Prince Florimund

Transfering markings to organza

Silk organza pinned to project, ready for transfer

I finally reached the next stage of the Craftsy Jeanius class, transferring the thread basting to the silk organza. This technique is so clever, because you can see through the organza, and transfer the markings, without damaging the original piece of clothing.
My husband's pants were relatively easy because the fabric is a tight weave (more like denim even though they are dress pants). The other pair of pants are made of linen, which is a loose weave fabric. That was more tricky because the fabric tends to distort when you try to lay it down flat.
Yesterday I began transfering the markings from the silk organza to paper. Again, that is so easy it really is a brilliant technique.
If you use a regular pencil, you can transfer a few key points directly onto the paper. Much quicker is to use tracing carbon paper, which you place under the silk organza on the paper. Using a tracing wheel, you trace the lines on the organza and voila: you have lines drawn on the paper.
The next step is to true (measure the garment and then adjust any of the lines) up the paper pattern and then make a muslin garment to check the fit.
I'll keep you posted.

New Nutcracker costumes

 Two years ago now, Scott Dolphin (scottdolphinstudio.com) and I started the difficult process of making new Nutcracker costumes. Since Nutcracker is the money maker for any ballet company, the costumes for it need to be beautiful and in good shape.
After more than 25 years of hard wearing, ours were well past needing to be replaced.

 Old Waltz of the flowers costumes

Scott made new designs for the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Waltz demi-soloists costumes that were style updates of the original costumes.
 I made new tutus for the Waltz corps de ballet, Waltz demi-Soloists, Dew Drop fairy, and the Sugar Plum fairy.
The artistic director wanted copies of the original costumes not new costumes which meant that I had to find tutu net in the same colors. I took the original tutus to the store and tried to find matching colors but had little luck.

Old Dew drop bodice, Old Sugar Plum, Old Waltz demi-solist costumes

As I have mentioned previously, there is a fashion in colors and after 25+ years, the colors that these tutus were made of were no longer available. It did not help that the tutus had also faded significantly and so the colors were no longer true. I found out after I made the tutus that the original corps de ballet tutus were red and gold (not rose pink, orange and peach as I thought), the demi-soloists were olive green and teal (not lime green and grey blue), Dew drop was white and silver (not ivory and grey) and Sugar Plum was white with almost bubble gum pink layers and pants.
The Dew Drop fairy was easy as white and white sparkle tutu net is widely available. The pink tutu net for Sugar plum was also not a problem. Scott choose a lovely dusty rose velvet for Sugar plum's new bodice and basque. He also designed the new demi-soloists to be up-side down bachelor buttons in shades of Celedon green, light sapphire blue, Williamsburg blue and gold.
Scott and I tried contacting every supplier of tutu net we could find but were unable to find the colors we (thought) we wanted, when we wanted it. Standard tutu net comes in a fairly limited range of colors: white, ivory, rose pink, hunter green, black etc. Everything is possible with enough time and money (i.e. special ordering and special manufacturing) but our budget did not run to that. The solution was to use tulle for some of the layers, as it was readily available in more suitable colors and hand dyeing lots of white netting. The only orange I had been able to find was extremely bright Halloween orange, which was not what was needed.

Hand dyeing netting for waltz corp tutus

Scott was an expert at dying fabrics and had dyed the tutu pants for me. I on the other hand had never dyed anything. At that point we were faced with an emergency because it was less than a month to the performance, I had six half made corps tutus, no light gold tutu net and Scott was busy making other costumes.
"How hard could it be"? were my famous last words.
Well I soon found out. A few tips to the novel, tutu net dyer:
1) Go to the RIT  site and read all the instructions, many times, write them down carefully before starting
2) Do your dying during day-light, not starting at say 9 p.m. after your children have gone to bed
3) Always do several test strips to make sure you get the color you want, not what you think it is on the screen.
4) When washing the netting after dying, use even less soap then you think you need.

I started the process of dying, eleven yards of tutu net (cut into strips), at around 10 p.m. By the time I had heated up the dye, dyed the net, washed it out in copious amounts of water to remove the unused dye and put it into my washing machine to wash it was late, very late (or early as it was way after midnight). I knew from washing out the old tutus in my bathtub, that a little soap made a lot of bubbles. Eleven yards of tutu net, even with 1 teaspoon of Woolite makes a lot of bubbles when agitated in a washing machine. I watched in horror as the little window on my front-loading washing machine filled up with bubbles and then slowly orange foam started to erupt from the washing machine hose as the rinse cycle started! Not what you want at 2 a.m. believe me.

I ran the rinse cycle a second time and that took care of the problem. I then had to hang the net up to dry as it could not go in the dryer. In the end the color was a perfect match to the corp de ballet tutu if not the original. I felt a bit like a crazy Rapunzel with all that orange netting.

Eleven yards of hand dyed tutu net, and the old Waltz tutus

After that is was a matter of pleating and sewing like crazy to get the tutus finished.  My assistant Carrie and I sewed as if we were possessed and sewed the last ruffle on the day before the dress rehearsal. The day before the performance, I was still steaming and tacking the corps tutus, Scott was finishing the demi-soloists and Sugar Plum and we were both a bit insane at that point.

New Waltz corp de ballet tutu

Waltz demi-soloist tutu

 New Sugar Plum tutu before tacking

Here is what the costumes looked like upon completion.

New Waltz Demi-solist costume, designed by Scott Dolphin, tutu by Hilary Sharp

New Sugar Plum tutu, designed by Scott Dolphin

 New Sugar Plum Bodice, design Scott Dolphin

Last year I  made a new maid's dress and a second Sugar plum costume

Second Sugar plum bodice, plate and tutu by Hilary Sharp

and an exact copy of the Marzipan girl's costume (see below). The original costume was too fragile to be altered any more. The original costume was made of a lilac taffeta and a light two tone teal fabric (possibly a sateen ) and had a Schifli lace overlay.

 Bodice of original Marzipan

Many years ago, when the original costume had been made, Schifili laces were still manufactured in New Jersey and other mills in the United States. All have gone out of business. Schifli laces are now only made in Switzerland, India and China and are very expensive,  starting at $150/yd. I was extremely lucky to find some affordable lace at Lacemart. The lady who runs this store, collects laces mostly bought from the New Jersey factories when they went out of business.
At this point I was a pro at dying fabric, but it still took me about six hours of making test strips, and then dying the actual fabric to get the right shade of teal. The result was very convincing and it fit the dancer perfectly.The original costume had been made for a much smaller dancer and so was much too short in the bodice and skirt for the other dancer.  Dancing is hard on costumes and this costume had been in constant use for over 15 years being let out and taken in for many dancers. Having a second costume in a different size, is always helpful.
Initially there was a plan to update the Waltz corps de ballet bodices but this had to be put off due to time and budget constraints. To see what the costumes looked like go to  Nutcracker on stage

 New Marzipan dress

Original Marzipan dress