Self-taught ballet costumier always strove for perfection
Agood costume helps a dancer get into character. It makes you move the way you’re supposed to. So said Andrew Pfeiffer, better known as Pfeiff, who spent the better part of his career making ‘‘gravity-defying’’ costumes for dancers at the Royal New Zealand Ballet company.
It was a raw talent that propelled Pfeiff along in his career. He made it to the top of his game without formal education and despite, or in spite of, a careers adviser telling him he’d never amount to anything more than a valet.
Born in Angaston, in the Barossa Valley, South Australia, Pfeiff’s fate as a costumier was sealed from an early age.
He and his two sisters were raised by their lineman father and dressmaker mother. As a small child Pfeiff was fascinated with textiles and spent endless hours with his mother in her sewing room, cutting up materials and making dresses for his sisters’ dolls.
After a brief stint as a bag boy at a department store, he found a job as a window dresser. There followed a period in the clothing factory Timer Fashions in Adelaide, where he started as a ‘‘dogsbody’’ before moving on to pattern-making and eventually designing.
‘‘I learnt pretty quickly to get patterns right. In the beginning I would get told ‘that’s wrong’ and off I would go till I figured it out. I was there for 10 years. It was the best way to learn,’’ he told the Manawatu Standard in 2014.
Pfeiff moved on to work as a fabric cutter for fashion designer Walter Kristenson. While there he moonlighted making costumes for the Boy Scouts Gang Show Theatre. When a bigwig from the State Opera of South Australia came to one of these shows he was so impressed by the costumes he offered Pfeiff a job whenever he was ready. Two years later he joined the opera company, where he would spend the next decade honing his craft.
The story of how he secured his job with the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) is legendary.
While still at the State Opera of South Australia he received a call from the RNZB. His former colleague Paul Warren had applied for a job and had listed him as a referee. Pfeiff remarked that Warren, whom he had mentored, was ‘‘OK’’ but that he was better. Pfeiff was offered the job on the spot.
Warren, who went on to become a successful designer, and Pfeiff remained friends.
Joining the company in 1986, Pfeiff started out as a pattern cutter and moved up the ranks, ending up as senior costumer. His speciality was as a milliner
At a time when the company had an extremely limited budget, Pfeiff was able to the cheapest materials and craft them into the finest costumes.
RNZB dancer William Fitzgerald spent every day with Pfeiff in his last few months. Pfeiff began sharing a patchwork of stories with Fitzgerald to paint a picture of his life – from his beginnings as a young gay man in Australia when being homosexual was illegal, to his move to New Zealand, which became his home and the ballet company his family.
He was unable to finish work on his oral history but was adamant he had got where he wanted to go in life, leaving a legacy of patterns for future costumers.
He died in Wellington on March 3, aged 69.