Banff build supports tomorrow’s costume designers

For the past 40 years, outrageous costumes have been Elton John’s stock in trade. His larger-than-life persona, companion to decades of hit songs, has been expressed in countless sets of oversized spectacles, spangled waistcoats, high-collared capes, platform shoes, and bushels of sequins, feathers, crystals, and glitter. His clothes have been as much a means of expression as his music. So what better way to immerse yourself in the creative world of Love Lies Bleeding, Alberta Ballet’s new production based on the music of Elton John, than to build the costumes?  

Based on previous, highly successful collaborations with Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maître, The Banff Centre was invited to build most of the costumes for Love Lies Bleeding. This highly creative undertaking took over the Centre’s costume shop for ten weeks this spring. Beginning with sketches, designs, and fabric ideas by Montreal-based costume designer Martine Bertrand, 23 wardrobe technicians, including eight apprentices, tackled the project, which demanded multiple costume changes throughout the show, many of them designed to be done right on the stage.  

Denise Gingrich, head of costumes for Love Lies Bleeding, was familiar with the Centre’s costume shop – she directed the build for the 2007 opera Frobisher, co-commissioned by the Centre and Calgary Opera. “This is a dream costume show,” Gingrich says about Love Lies Bleeding. “We were able to pull out all the bells and whistles.” Getting from sketch to stage required daily problem-solving – how to create a massive, chandelier-shaped headpiece that a dancer could move in onstage, how to add flashing lights to a costume without blinding other dancers or audience members, how to make a four-foot-wide, leaf-covered skirt light enough to wear.  

“This is a dream costume show. We were able to pull out all the bells and whistles”  

“When I saw the costumes on stage during rehearsal for the first time I thought ‘We are really well-prepared,’” Bertrand says about the technical requirements for the show. All the crystal and glitter worked its magic, and created exactly the stage effects she wanted. “It was exactly the way I had seen it in my head.”  

Gingrich adds that the technical skills, and trial and error involved in the show, gave costumers opportunities to learn and practice rare skills. She points to those leafy skirts – a stylized form of 18th-century garment called a pannier. For the show, each skirt was underpinned with a stiff lightweight cage of netting and boning to stand out wide from the dancer’s body, attached to a bodice and covered with gold-painted leaves.  

Building the panniers was a unique learning opportunity for theatre production work study James Braun, a graduate of the costume certificate program at vancouver’s Capilano College. He lived and worked at The Banff Centre through the show’s costume build. “Making the panniers was the most challenging thing,” he says. “Physically, they’re just really big, and they’re made out of industrial materials.” The skirts provide a good example of the intense creative process behind a show of this scale. Braun’s work was guided by preliminary research and development by more senior wardrobe technicians, under the close eye of senior cutter Mitchell MacKay.  

At another table, master milliner Leslie Norgate created high-standing, leaf-covered headpieces to match the skirts, each one sprayed in gold and green, with leaves attached by cable ties to a lightweight, cage-style structure. Norgate came to Banff to work on Love Lies Bleeding as part of the Andrea Brussa Master Artist Endowment Fund, awarded annually to top artists in specialty theatre crafts. Designing and building all the hats and headpieces for the show, she was also on hand to provide a rare level of mentorship to two millinery work studies.  

Based in Toronto and one of the most sought-after theatrical milliners in North America, Norgate has worked on shows for companies including the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the National Ballet of Canada, and the Metropolitan Opera. Her work on Love Lies Bleeding ranged from tight-fitting, futuristic black skullcaps to stylized palace sentry hats, bristling with black fur. She says that as with every new show, there was plenty to learn, even for a seasoned professional.  

 

In the case of this show, she was able to experiment extensively with a material called Lexan, a clear, pliable plastic similar to Plexiglas, but much stronger. Among other accessories created for the ballet, she used Lexan to craft the elaborate chandelier worn in one scene by the Elton John character. Onstage, it will look as if it was created from white wire. “The audience doesn’t see all the research and development that goes into everything,” Norgate notes. “They don’t see the samples, or the adjustments.”  

The creativity comes in taking a costume designer’s original idea, and finding a way to make it work, with all the challenges of stage lighting, movement, costume change, and audience sightlines. Norgate has been particularly gratified by the creative collaboration she and the whole team have had with Bertrand, who flew back and forth across the country for initial consultations, and fittings with Alberta Ballet. “It’s always a collaboration between the designer and the builder, to combine the design side and the technical side,” Norgate says. “It’s common for designs to evolve.”  

Ultimately, the proof is on stage. One of the most anticipated stage productions in Canada this year, Love Lies Bleeding is a virtuoso creative and technical achievement. Beginning with a book full of sketches, these craftspeople have followed the same evolution of creativity, development, and metamorphosis that has imbued every step of this remarkable ballet.