‘Nutcracker’ a year-round project for ballet artisans
Costume shop staff looks for damage, wear constantly
If you think the Milwaukee Ballet’s “Nutcracker” production is a flurry of activity onstage, try being a fly on the wall at the company’s studios, costume shop and scenic shop this time of year.
Speaking from the company’s costume shop, costume manager Mary Piering said that the show “hangs over our heads all year long.”
Although there may have been some figurative meaning to that statement, Piering’s intent was largely literal. The company’s “Nutcracker” costumes are stored on racks hung above the workspace in the costume shop.
The overhead storage is not just a clever use of space; it also keeps the costumes close at hand for ongoing repairs and reconstruction.
“All through the season, whenever we have a few days or even a few hours, we take something down and look it over,” she said.
Piering and the costume shop staff look for damage, wear from repeated alterations for different dancers, and perhaps the worst enemy of any costumes, the disintegration of fabric.
“Fabric just ages,” Piering explained. “The wool costumes (suits, capes, etc.) are still fine, but the silk is starting to get threadbare. The party dresses need constant attention.”
She explained that silk gets thin and frayed on the creases of pleats. The only way to fix that is to take the dress apart and re-pleat the fabric, hiding the worn spots on the inside folds of the pleats.
“Still, there comes a point where it’s just not cost effective, or the fabric is just not strong enough to take it apart and put it back together one more time,” Piering said. At that point the shop builds a
new costume.
She said that this year marks the “19th wearing” for these costumes, adding, “The costumes were only supposed to live for 15 years.”
Relying on her mental inventory of the costumes, Piering ran through the show and listed the original, rebuilt and soon-to-be rebuilt items, as well as a few that just need a little extra help this year.
“The lead clown needs a little more attention this year, the mouse heads have taken a beating, but the bodies aren’t too bad. The geese are going to have to be replaced in the next year — they’ve molted a bit too much.”
Milwaukee Ballet artistic director Michael Pink is acutely aware of not just the production’s aging costumes, but of its aging sets as well.
“It’s like owning a house,” Pink said. “You can only put off the home repairs for so long. Our biggest and most popular asset is beginning to fray and crumble.”
Saying that the company will have “No choice but to raise funds for a new production at some point,” he said, “I doodle constantly,” putting down thoughts on a new production.
The key, he said, will be finding the right people to invest in the production. “It offers corporations and wealthy individuals the opportunity to invest in something they know will be here for the foreseeable future.”
Leading artist Timothy O’Donnell, dancing his fifth Milwaukee Ballet “Nutcracker” this year, will appear as Drosselmeyer, the Arabian dancer, the father and Karl, in the different casts.
O’Donnell, who said he particularly loves dancing Drosselmeyer, said that for the second year in a row one of the boys in the party scene hid in the stove set piece on the first day of rehearsals and lunged out at him when he went to toss in the rat.
“This is the second year I squealed in front of the whole company,” he said, laughing.
When asked if he thought he would miss dancing “Nutcracker” each year when his dancing career ends, O’Donnell explained that in Australia, where he grew up, there isn’t really a holiday “Nutcracker” tradition.
“I asked (Milwaukee Ballet artist) Barry Molina just recently if he would take children of his own to see ‘Nutcracker,’ and he said he would definitely want his children to have that experience,” O’Donnell said.
“I think I would go see it if I could take someone young to the performance,” he said. “I think that would help me enjoy it more.”
For Pink, dancing several weeks of “Nutcracker” and doing two shows per day on many days, is the closest dancers get to the experience of performing in a Broadway show.
“Your brain clicks in when the music starts and you connect yourself to it,” he said. “It works, every time.”