Swan Lake Episode 3: The Costumes | The National Ballet of Canada

The difference between designing for ballet or theatre is basically, you're very much driven by the score. This is a beautiful Tchaikovsky score and the design needs to flow with the music and as well flow with the dance, with the movement. It's quite a pure form, I think, so visually it needs to all work together. I'm originally a painter, so the starting point was my painting of the lake and it's very brushstrokey textures. I work with my graphic designer and we layer it in Photoshop. To capture this on the costumes, we ended up using digital printing fabrics, which basically I'm using the same textures on the costume, so that's how I can achieve it. So we're digitally printing them from the set pieces. Gabriella's intention was for the costumes to be moving, living pieces of the set. So many of the patterns that you'll see in the fabrics come directly from the set and when we're looking at the bodices, you can actually see where the paint strokes are really visible and it's sort of playing on those paint strokes to emulate patterns of a feather. It's Swan Lake, it's predominantly Swan costumes and the question was how we actually create feathers. I was thinking, you know, using real feathers, A, is just really tricky maintenance-wise and they're not very big as well, so they won't read very well. So we ended up developing pleated fabric, basically, and digitally printing fabric and working out how to create these feathers out of material. We made 42 tutus for Swan Lake. On each tutu, there's approximately 130 feathers with about six different fabrics, all handmade feathers. Each feather is custom made to size with a very detailed map as to where it gets placed and that's how we maintain that they're all identical. It's a collaboration with whoever is making the costumes. I have a team in Australia which I've worked on many occasions. Then we passed on what we came up with to the team in Canada and we've been further developing the costume here. Rothbard is the main evil character who is actually manipulating everyone around. He's based on a bird, so we're still using feathers in his costume. Except we're doing feathers, we're using different materials, different scale, different colour, but it's a similar concept because he created the swans, so they're kind of his babies in a way. So it's fun to go from this to actually realising it as a real costume. Once you have a beautiful fabric, more than half of the job is done because the fabric will actually do so much for you on stage. I'm enjoying Act 3 because we're doing a masquerade and we've got all these extras which are in the production which don't need to dance, which is brilliant because that means we can do fun things and they don't have to be technically danceable. So we're creating all these new characters which I don't think they have been in the Swan Lake, so I'm enjoying that part. COVID actually gave us an opportunity to sort of slow down and really kind of focus on what the sort of finishing details are to make sure that we can deliver a production that is Gabriela's vision. At the beginning, I go, oh my god, it's Swan Lake, you know and then I just completely disregard it. I just go, well, I'm doing my work and not be frightened basically by the beast of, this is the Swan Lake. For me, the most important is capturing the spirit of the show and the movement. I do have image what I want it to look like and that can come at night or I just see it during the day. You know, I could be in a car, suddenly I'll go, I know what it should look like. Suddenly I've got the, it's like the moment when you know what you're trying to get.