Ballet West: 'Nutcracker' waltz more bold this year, thanks to costumes

This year, Ballet West is going for bold.

Willam F. Christensen's much-adored ballet, "The Nutcracker," will be more striking, especially when it comes to the "Waltz of the Flowers" costumes, said costume and production designer David Heuvel.

"We haven't built new costumes for the waltz since 1998," Heuvel said during an interview at the Ballet West costume department. "And we needed to because the older ones were in bad shape. We took the opportunity to adjust the colors and make them stand out."

Instead of the lighter pastels that have been present during the waltz in the past years, the news costumes feature deeper purples and pinks.

Revamping the costumes proved to be a logistical exercise in hard work and timing.

"There are 16 dancers, but we have a total of 26 bodices that we salvaged from the past costumes," he said. "We had to make 36 skirts."

To facilitate the skirts' flower motif, Heuvel and his crew created 1,800 petals that needed to be sewn onto the skirts.

"We used 350 yards of nylon for the skirts and petals," he said. "And we had only a short period of time to do that and send the skirts to Houston to be dyed and painted the colors we needed them to be."

The petals were created with two pieces of nylon and then edged in green.

"We work on the costumes on and off, because of the other productions we have to do," said Heuvel. "So altogether it may have taken four full days to apply the petals to 23 completed skirts."

Costume work for "The Nutcracker" actually began in July, when the staff returned from the off-season, said Heuvel.

"We knew we were going to have to do some major work this year," he said. "And we start with the corps de ballet, because we know all the dancers will be a part of the corps numbers. When we get

the cast for the demi-soloists, soloists and principals, then we can begin work on those individual costumes. But when we start, we start with the corps costumes."

Heuvel and costume shop manager Cindy Farrimond have a system they work with to keep track of of the demi-soloist and the soloist costumes that are scattered among the throng of corps costumes.

"When we find out who is dancing the solos, we start to work on their costumes," he said. "When the cast is set in stone, we then write each of the soloists names in the bodices and then work from there."