San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Nutcracker’ flowers get brighter look
Every year around this time, Godfather Drosselmeyer arrives with his bag of gifts; Clara dances with the Sugar Plum Fairy; and audiences are wooed by the undulations of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers.”
But San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson’s “Nutcracker,” which opens Wednesday, Dec. 12, at the War Memorial Opera House, promises something that has not been seen since the company presented the first
“Nutcracker”:
Wednesday, Dec. 12 through Dec. 29. $39-$399. War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-8652000. www.sfballet.org “Nutcracker” in the United States in 1944: the purple flourish and sequined embellishments of new flower costumes.
Since Tomasson’s ”Nutcracker” set in 1915 San Francisco was introduced in 2004, the pink, yellow and orange palette of the costumes faded, and the bodices hung too low. So a decision was made to design new costumes.
The job went to the woman responsible for overseeing the flower costumes 14 years ago. Janine McCabe was the assistant to Martin Pakledinaz, the costume creator for the original production, who died in 2012.
“I remember clearly at that time … we had some trouble with the flower costumes,” said McCabe, who teaches costume design at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. According to her, even though the costumes were drawn beautifully, they always felt too bulky. “Looking back, we never got it to the right place,” she said. Tomasson, who worked with Pakledinaz on a number of productions, agreed. “The original costumes were well designed, but never quite captured the effect that I was looking for,” he said. “I’ve always envisioned the flower costumes to have a flowing feeling, because they are paired with such a beautiful waltz.”
From her role as head designer, McCabe set forth with two goals for the new look: more movement and more color.
“You know how if you watch a petal fall in the wind or fall to the ground, it doesn’t just land. It kind of floats and sways?” she said. “We want that movement. We want them to float.”
To achieve this effect, she lengthened the skirts and trimmed off some of the layers that had felt bulky in her mentor’s costumes.
“Marty demanded a lot of everyone that worked for him, and even more of himself. He was committed to every detail.”
Even while redoing his work, she honored him through her painstaking research. She stud-
ied a wide variety of California flowers, to understand how each color breaks down. What emerged was a spread of purples and greens, orange sequins, and four yellow-orange hues converging to create the golden glow in one of the skirts — all part of two sets of interchangeable bodices and skirts.
“There are a lot of details that you wouldn’t necessarily know watching (the show), but that will hopefully give it the right energy and life … even though you might not know why,” she said.
Among the details of production were countless sketches, trips between Charleston and San Francisco, and consultations with a costume maker in New York.
For McCabe, the project is a lot more than sewing petals.
“I’ve thought about Marty a lot throughout this,” McCabe said. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him, and try to be the type of costume designer that he was.”
Just as many shades are required to make one botanical hue, this year’s show includes the visions of Tomasson, Pakledinaz and now McCabe. Regardless of how they look, sewn into these flower costumes is a long history of ”Nutcracker” and ballet
in San Francisco.
Emma Heath is a freelance writer. Email ebheath@ alumni.stanford. edu Twitter: @emmabheath