Costuming ‘The Nutcracker’

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

In his blue-striped dress shirt and black pants, New York City Ballet’s costume director, Marc Happel, looked like a businessman amid a sea of pink tulle. But with nearly 300 elaborately detailed costumes to get in shape for the season premiere of NYCB’s yearly production of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” on Friday, he had no time to care.

“It’s been a push,” Mr. Happel said during a recent afternoon of fittings. “We have 20 new flower costumes, and then on top of that we have the dewdrops — there are seven of them and they’re all in states of …”

Mr. Happel’s voice trailed off but his intent was clear: disarray. But not to worry. This costume shop — manned by 18 stout Eastern European women, and a few men, with decades of experience among them — has done it all before. “The Nutcracker,” the popular childhood fantasy of candy confections brought to life, is an annual project at NYCB. And in addition to preparing the dancers and students through countless rehearsals, the company must ensure that the production’s visual components — the sets and costumes — are in working order.

NYCB runs 45 performances of “The Nutcracker,” most of them on consecutive nights. Once the ballet begins, there is little time to stop to fix an errant hem or improve on niceties. It moves full steam ahead, night after night between November 24 and December 30.

This year, the costume shop had a particularly large task set before it: remaking all of the costumes used in the Act II scene “Waltz of the Flowers.” That includes the corps de ballet’s flower costumes and the costumes for Dewdrop, a principal role.

Though only one principal ballerina dances the role each night, each star gets her own costume. And as Mr. Happel looked over them, the garments were in need of some attention. Their nude-colored mesh bodices were attached to elastic straps with safety pins; their teardrop-shaped crystal adornments held on by flimsy thread. “We started the day that we came back, which was the 16th of October, and I bet we’ll be working on these bodices until probably Friday the 24th, in some form or another,” Mr. Happel said, half-joking.

A few of the men and women slouched at the 10 work tables overheard him and muttered in agreement. Though Mr. Happel is a recent addition, many of the employees have toiled there for several decades. A wall map in the shop indicates their origins with pushpins — three pins in Uzbekistan for “Regina,” “Yelena,” and “Olga;” one pin for “Raya” inserted near the Russia/Ukraine border, and so on.

Head draper Zinaida Panasevich — known as “Zina”to the dancers and her fellow employees — has worked in the costume shop for the 25 years since she emigrated from Russia. “I was a teacher at a school for sewing and stitching and making patterns — a sewing school. I didn’t have experience with costumes. I learned over here,” Ms. Panasevich, 60, said.

Ms. Panasevich is a taskmaster when it comes to her fittings schedule. “They are very good,” she said of the young School of American Ballet students, who dance in the ballet. “These girls,” she said, gesturing toward a teenage company member in the corps de ballet who had just exited the fitting room “We have to ask them two, three times. But the little ones, they always come on time.”

Ms. Panasevich — who wears her yellow tape-measure around her neck at all times as a physician would a stethoscope — should know. She fits all of the costumes to the female dancers.

When new costumes, like those of this year’s Flowers, are being made, the dancers require at least two fittings. And before any new costume can be made, 19 measurements, including everything from standard waist and hip measurements to the circumference of the dancers’ calves and ankles, must be recorded on a paper grid.

“When they measure us, they measure everything,” dancer Gwyneth Muller said as she had her second fitting for her Flower costume.

Once the frothy hot pink and white tulle skirts, accented with green flowers, are sewn to pink satin bodices, fittings on the dancers bodies require numerous tiny adjustments — a quarter of an inch raised here, an eighth of an inch tighter there.

“Is that high enough for you?” Ms. Panasevich asked dancer Dara Johnson as she pulled the satin up around her chest. “I’ll take as much as you can give me,” Ms. Johnson replied with a sly grin. Ms. Panasevich rolled her eyes.

To ensure all of the new costumes are rebuilt to match the specifications of the originals designed by Karinska, the famed costume designer who worked with NYCB co-founder George Balanchine, Mr. Happel and the other designers consult manila files filled with swatches of material, notes on fabrics and measurements, and black-andwhite photos of old costumes. Some folders hold unexpected treasures, like a photo of Jean-Pierre Frohlich, now a company ballet master, as the lead Candy Cane from a 1992 production. The “Mother Ginger” folder, for the Act II character with the immense skirt concealing a dozen children underneath it, indicates the character is actually considered half-set, half-costume.

The designers and seamstresses then go to work, relying on the contents of a wall of gray metal cabinets labeled with tags like “crepe + cotton,” “silk chiffon,” and “horsehair,” and shelves above filled with a rainbow of bolts of fabric — blood red to inky black. They also have at their disposal a dye shop in the back of their workroom.

To make one complete costume, “It can take a couple of weeks,” Mr. Happel said.”With the shopping, the dying, the cuttings, the fittings.”

As a budgetary matter, the costume shop can consume between $25,000 and $100,000, if a production requires new costumes. “There are not a lot of ballet companies who can say they have their own costume shop,”Mr. Happel said. “It’s an expensive luxury.”

Of all the garments in “The Nutcracker” there is one that demands special care. The tiny gray satin, furtrimmed party dress worn by the ballet’s heroine, Marie.

“It feels puffy,” said Margot Pitts, 8, as she tried on the dress for the first time recently. “It seems like when you spin in rehearsals, it doesn’t go out a lot but in this dress it does!” Ms. Pitts said delightedly while turning like a top in front of a mirror.

Mr. Happel and Ms. Panasevich were less pleased: On the bottom of her skirt, they spotted a stain. Within moments, the two had decided to rip apart the two versions of Marie’s costume and sew them back together to make one new unsullied dress. “Here’s an example of what happens,” Mr. Happel said dejectedly. Ms. Panasevich, her forehead furrowed, marched away to begin the work.

Though it would be nearly impossible to see the stain onstage, nothing gets by these watchful eyes.


The New York Sun

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