Enjoying frenzied young fans cram themselves high into the bleachers of fashion show following fashion show last month, I thought more than once of the opening scene of the 1948 Powell-Pressburger movie, “The Red Shoes, ” which stars Moira Shearer as an remarkably doomed dancer.
“They’re going mad, sir, ” a guard says as a mafia pounds against the Covent Garden doors. “It’s the students. ”
Granted admittance, the particular balletomanes stampede for the cheap seats. “Into the valley of death! ” one shouts gaily, diving into the balcony’s front row. “Into the teeth of hell! ” another exults.
Such rough enthusiasm, obvious in the street-styled hordes that converged on Lincoln Center in early September, is hard to imagine emanating from the sedate, gray-dappled audience that visits the David H. Koch Movie theater there for the New York City Ballet, currently in the middle of its fall season. By attractive fashion designers to collaborate on the costumes, as it has for several years after getting prodded by Sarah Jessica Parker, a vice chairwoman of its table, the company sprinkles a little stardust on the production. This fall, with a roster that features Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Thom Browne, Mary Katrantzou and Carolina Herrera, the stardust is pouring from a shaker.
“It’s not new by any means, ” the company’s costume director, Marc Happel, said on the phone, pointing out that Cocorota Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent both designed for ballet; indeed, both Jacques Fath and also Carven are credited on “The Red Shoes. ” (Other historically considerable collaborations are chronicled in the current Fashion Institute of Technology exhibition “Dance and also Fashion. ”)
“What there hasn’t been is the number of fashion designers you will have working on one project, ” Mr. Happel said. “Four, incredibly varied inside the style of the costumes. ” And non-e comes with the heavy corporate overlay that has mired previous partnerships between designers and cultural institutions, like Armani and the Guggenheim or Chanel and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
NYC Ballet presents Form & Function: Designing the Dance Video by newyorkcityballet
NY Ballet presents Form & Function: Designing the Dance Video by newyorkcityballet
Yet whenever fashion designers, with their house signatures and acclimation to ego-stroking, are involved in ballet, the question arises of whether the costumes enhance the dance or keep from it, as was charged of the complicated ones contributed by the retired couturier Valentino Garavanitwo years ago. (A quieter few of which reappeared Sept. 23 on the ballet’s gala, as the fashion industry lurched from Milan to Paris. )
Certainly it was difficult last Tuesday evening watching Franz Liszt’s “Funérailles, ” as choreographed by Liam Scarlett, to concentrate on the footwork, given the seriously swirling hem of the gold-embroidered frock coat on the male lead, Robert Fairchild, designed by Ms. Burton and worn over black leggings and a bare chest.
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Subjected to twirls and lifts, Mr. Fairchild’s hem sprained ankle fanned out and sometimes flopped to one side awkwardly, like a useless fin. His or her partner Tiler Peck’s ombré tumble of black and white skirts floated enticingly, yet her bodice, strapless, seemed encumbered by stiff overgrown petals at its bottom, fixing everything but her bared shoulders and arms in place.
The ballet dancers in “Belles-Lettres, ” by César Franck, choreographed by Justin Peck, looked far more comfortable, the women in snug tops and sheer, floating skirts; the boys in full-length unitards, making them look, as they curled and flexed onstage, similar to a troupe of happy prawns.
“Are those guys naked? ” my partner asked. Granted, she is 8 years old.
But Thom Browne’s were all too grounded in real life. For “Clearing Dawn, ” with audio by Judd Greenstein and choreography by Troy Schumacher, Mr. Browne, simply no stranger to stagecraft in his runway shows, provided outfits that one could easily photo on any Upper East Side prep-school student wanting to polish some fiber-rich baby food this autumn.
The dancers came out in overcoats that were hoisted off these and hung in the air, symbolizing - what, exactly, it wasn’t clear.
“That is so fun! ” an audience member exclaimed.
Underneath, with a general plan of opaque gray flannel tipped in white, the men had been outfitted together with tight vests, trouser shorts and knee socks; the women short, pleated pants over tights, and cardigans. Each had snugly fitting boxy jackets, which usually visibly creased and strained during pirouettes.
“I tend to, in my collections, certainly not worry about movement as much, ” Mr. Browne, in seersucker, says in the video clip with a little laugh as ballerinas jut their elbows, raise their brows and furrow their brows, trying on his work-in-progress. “The whole jacket must feel really almost like she’s wearing her little brother’s jacket, ” he instructs a fitter.
The result was entertaining, but in the manner of a amusing book; the overcoats might have been going places, but this spectator was not sent.
Yet even in sight gags like the lumbering Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker, ” better suited to her demographic, with children spilling from an huge hoop skirt, to watch ballet is in essence to confront the human body, and this Milliseconds. Katrantzou firmly grasped. From far up the audience you could see slight protrusions on her creations; in a video shown at the gala, it was revealed that these were the particular “beautiful letters” of the piece’s title: a lace alphabet in mint, lemon and lavender left over from the designer’s most recent resort collection.
“It was nothing at all dissimilar to work we’ve done, ” she said later on the phone, referring to the knowledge, her first designing for the ballet. “I’m sure if we went into the associated with tutus we’d have to be more technical about it. ”
Many of the costumes in the efficiency, though, at least alluded to this mystical world of tutus, even the French designer Adeline Andre’s elfin color blocking for a new version of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition, ” choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, in which the dancers seemed to arouse, rouse, stimulate Kandinsky-inspired paintings of shapes projected behind them.
Ms. Herrera’s costumes for Peter Martins’s “Morgen. " Credit Hazel Mohin/The New York Times
Carolina Herrera’s costumes for Peter Martins’s “Morgen, ” a series of pas de deux set to the Richard Strauss Lieder and 1st performed in 2001, had the opposite effect.
This is sort of a classical “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, ” with a lot of partner-swapping occurring around looming columns, but so mesmerizing were the women (Sterling Hyltin, Helen Kowroski and Sara Mearns), I didn’t entirely realize that they were dancing with various men (Ask la Cour, Justin Peck and Amar Ramasar). Mini, mi-journée, maxi: respectively, there was fluttery white, draped salmon and a bewitching midnight shade, one-shouldered and lashed with subtle sparkle.
One could not locate Ms. Herrera’s dresses in history, and therefore they had the desirable effect of briefly stopping time.
View the original article here
No comments :
Post a Comment