PNB's Coppélia Goes Couture

Published June 9, 2010 at 9:00 p.m.

Coppélia's wedding gown Coppélia (running through this Sunday, June 13), a charming 19th century ballet about an inventor, a beautiful life-size doll, love and of course, a little magic, is going back to its Italian roots with di Bagno. Locally-based PNB costume designers like Victoria McFall and Mark Zappone design a good amount of PNB’s costumes, but this version of Coppélia is different— it’s making its debut in Seattle for the first time ever (Balanchine recreated the original 1870 production exclusively for the New York City Ballet). Gary Tucker, PNB's Media Relations Manager, tells us that it's kind of a big deal that The George Balanchine Trust gave PNB permission to (a) stage Balanchine’s Coppélia and (b) design new sets and costumes for it. So for new productions, PNB’s team researches designers who are not only bonafide artists, but have a deep, intellectual understanding of set and costume design and an intimate knowledge of the ballet itself.

With a few functional requests from Artistic Director, Peter Boal, the costume shop is ready to pump out 125 costumes, from extravagant wedding gowns to your average Medieval folk-person garb. (Think 125 is tough? Sleeping Beauty is 190 costumes, with over 900 individual pieces!) But with such competent seamstresses, and durable, won’t-wrinkle-when-it’s-tossed-on-the-floor-in-a-thirty-second-wardrobe-change fabrics like polyester and nylon materials, most of the costumes are maintained and reused over and over again. The annual Nutcracker wardrobe was last produced in 1983, so for 27 years hundreds of dancers have tip-toed about in the Costume Shop’s original collection.

For new, large-scale ballet productions like Coppélia, the costume shop is consumed with constructing and altering garments for almost an entire year. While the choreography is acrobatic and theatrical, (to borrow from Amy Mikel's review) there is less actual dancing than there is in Balanchine's other works. As a result, much of our focus is on the splendor and pure magical awesomeness of di Bagno's fantastical set design and fairy-landesque fashions. From the sea of pink tutu-ed corps de ballet of 10-14 year-old ballet students, kooky inventors and their collection of delightfully decorative dolls, and a sparkly fairy tale wedding scene, the wardrobe and visual impact of this production ranks right up there with the wonders of the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland...

Through June 13th // McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer Street // $25 - $160 (206-441-2424 or www.pnb.org)

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