PART 1: Versailles

In May 2024, Les Danseuses showcased their new dance production “Dance…no matter what” and again we had the privilege to make some of their costumes. It wasn’t without it’s challenges, like most projects, but in the end, all worked out fine and we enjoyed it.

It’s all about how you start and end!
As you know, I always say you need to open with a wow factor, one of the highlights of the show, that will not just surpass your audience’s expectations, but to set a great foundation of the level of excellence the audience can expect for the rest of the show.

The opening scene for “Dance…no matter what” started with a banquet scene from Versailles, where 12 dancers did a performance for Queen Marie-Antoinette…so you can imagine how exquisite that needed to be to portray that message. All glitz and glamour and it was crucial to get that right and transport the audience back to the 18th century.

There’s quite a lot of factors to consider when choosing your fabric, for instance price, choreography, practicality, feeling or message you want to portray, historical accuracy, stage lighting, etc. Therefore it is very important that you choose the correct fabric to make a great show.

Although Queen Marie-Antoinette is usually dressed in pastel coloured dresses when depicted on TV shows or movies, we decided to use a dark crimson coloured fabric, so that the queen would be prominent and stand out amongst her guests. This much bolder colour was so striking on stage especially when the lights reflected from it. Remember, you always need to keep in mind not just the historical accuracy or the message and ambience that’s being portrayed, bur also how a colour translates on stage under all the stage lights. In order to still keep the feel of the era, we decided to keep the guests in pastel colours, which facilitated with making Marie-Antoinette pop and stand out on stage amongst her guests.

One of the issues we needed to consider when designing the dress is that at one point in the scene, the queen joins her guests for a dance. So we needed to keep the dress short enough in front for her to move around, while keeping a long train and volume to create the necessary impact for the dress. Luckily with the panniers (side hoops) underneath, we were able to keep the bulk of the fabric in the back and on the sides, without loosing the volume and the drama.

When we looked at the type of fabric, we decided on Taffeta, a stiff curtain fabric, because it is easier to use for structured garments with little movement. It is also cheaper than dressmaking fabric and the width of the fabric is larger, so we could cut full circles without needing to join pattern pieces together.

Thanks for reading!

Fabric shopping is always one of my favourite tasks when making costumes for a show, but this year I was unable to complete this task. Find out why in my next blog post of the NEW Marie-Antoinette series, where I will share a bit of my personal challenges faced during this show and how things turned out.

PS: The feature photo is from the dance production “Dance…no matter what” by Les Danseuses Adult Ballet studio.

Blog posts in the Marie-Antoinette series:
PART 1: Versailles

Upcoming blog posts in the Marie-Antoinette series:
PART 2: What else can go wrong?
PART 3: How many patterns does it take to make one dress?
PART 4: Creating the drama element…the Skirt
PART 5: The most intricate and time consuming part…the Bodice
PART 6: Fitting…the most important step
PART 7: What is a Queen without a train?
PART 8: A gown fit for a Queen!
PART 9: The show must go on

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