'The Nutcracker' costumes have never looked sweeter

“The Nutcracker is a blessing and a curse,” says Chris Takashima. “We call it a beast.” She’s not talking casting or choreography—it’s the costuming that makes her head spin faster than a dancer doing pirouettes.

As designer for the Eglevsky Ballet, Takashima is responsible for some 300 costumes in the annual production and she is far from alone. As dance companies all over Long Island get ready to stage the holiday classic, the people responsible for dressing the performers are consumed with yards of satin and mountains of tulle as opening dates get frighteningly close.

COSTUMES WITH PERSONALITY

At Hampton Ballet Theater School, costume designer Kate McManus says that while the costumes are inspired by those worn at New York City Ballet, “they definitely have their own personality.” Director Sara Jo Strickland adds that the costumes, all handmade, “make a big difference to the overall professionalism of the show.” The dancers, she says “feel great when they have beautiful costumes.”

The school has slowly built its costume collection, says Strickland, noting that when they it started in 2007, only a few individual pieces from the work were performed. This year, for the school’s 15th annual “Nutcracker” (Dec. 13-15 at Guild Hall in East Hampton), they have created new costumes for the 16 party girls in the opening scene. McManus says she researched dresses with a Victorian theme and came up with different designs in deep colors—golds, maroons, blues—that coordinated with the new outfits she’d done a couple years ago for the boys in the scene. “We try to make them feel like princesses,” said Strickland.

At New York Dance Theatre, some of the costumes once belonged to the New York City Ballet. Started 50 years ago by NYCB dancer Frank Ohman, the company has been gifted with several original costumes created by the legendary Barbara Karinska, said executive artistic director Nicole Loizides Albruzzese. When the eccentric Herr Drosselmeyer makes his entrance in this year’s production (Dec. 21-22 at Hofstra University’s John Cranford Adams Playhouse in Hempstead), he will be wearing the same costume once worn by Shaun O’Brien, who originally danced the role with City Ballet, as well as in New York Dance Theater’s initial Nutcrackers.

Albruzzese is especially attached to the Dew Drop costume, another of the originals gifted to the company. She danced the role in her preprofessional days and loves the way the pale pink costume reflects the action of a “flick of water rolling from one stem to another.”

WHEN A 10-YEAR-OLD TALKS, LISTEN

The Eglevsky production (Dec. 21-22 at Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Brookville) is “a very colorful Nutcracker,” says Takashima. The Florida-based designer has worked with artistic director Maurice Brandon Curry for more than 25 years and notes his wonderful eye “for what looks good on his choreography.” It’s important to understand what’s required, she says. “You must know how the costume has to move.”
It’s important to listen to the dancers, as well, says Takashima. She looks back to designing a new costume for the first little boy to dance in the Mother Ginger segment. Two of the girls in the piece, one of the most beloved scenes in the production, came to Curry and pointed out that the young boy couldn’t wear their costumes. “They asked if they could design something,” said Takashima, and they gave us a sketch from which she created the costume. “Maurice took them very seriously,” she said. “That’s classic Maurice, listening to 10-year-olds.”

Creating the costumes is one thing, maintaining them quite another. They can be quite expensive, says Takashima, noting that when she redid the Waltz of the Flowers costumes for Eglevsky several years ago, each tulle confection cost around $500. She says she includes “trap doors” in many of her costumes, hidden pieces that allow for easy alterations if the fit isn’t perfect.

“These costumes are meant to be worn for a lifetime and ours have held up quite well,” says Albruzzese, noting that they’re stored in airtight containers in climate-controlled facilities. And there are rules. “Our dancers are taught from a young age not to sit in their costumes,” she says, and people help them dress to avoid makeup smudges and the like.

“Survival of the costumes is critical,” says Strickland. “We teach the students that it is their responsibility to take care of their costumes,” she says, it’s part of the respect we expect of the dancers. The biggest taboo: food. “If I see food around a costume,” she says, “you don’t want to be there.”