Grand Finale: Wipe away the tears

When you bring your audience and the cast backstage to tears, I would classify that as a success and the finale of the Les Danseuses dance production “When Life Happens”, did just that. It was definitely the climax of the show. Every scene lead up to this moment and it did not disappoint. I believe the success of a show is not just dependent on excellent choreography, but also on costumes, music, lighting and the story line, all of these elements need to work together to evoke emotion and lead your audience through the story. The ultimate aim is to leave your audience with a message they will remember.

To understand the “accidental” colour choice of the tutus, I would first like to give a bit of background on the message of the show. “When Life Happens” tells the story of how God created the earth and mankind, how everything was beautiful and worked together in harmony. Then it takes a downhill turn and depicts different scenes where mankind destroys the earth and each other. Once we reach the lowest point where we feel desolated and without any prospects, we realise that there is still Hope in God, no matter our surroundings. The finale illustrated how we can experience life in heaven one day.

We knew we wanted to make 6 tutus and originally we wanted to make them in vibrant jewel tone colours…pairs of royal blue, emerald and ruby red. But if you’ve read any of my previous blog posts that’s part of this series, you’ll know by now that we bought the fabric just before the Covid19 hard lockdown and we had to take what we can get…so we ended up with a very pale gold. We were so disappointed at the time. How are we ever going to make them sparkle on stage I didn’t know and we were worried that the ballerinas would just look naked, because it is so close to their body tone? But in the end, I think the gold turned out even more spectacular. The picture of the 6 identical golden tutus sparkling in their glory was just something magnificent to see and really brought tears to our eyes.

For the bodice and plate, we’ve used stretch velvet and we embellished it with lace motives, rhine stones, sequence, beads and Swarovski crystals from my own wedding dress. I’ve always been waiting for the perfect project to reuse my wedding dress and this just seemed so appropriate. Swarovski crystals sparkle a lot more that regular beads and that’s what we wanted for the finale, a lot of sparkle to really make these tutus come to life. They took a couple of weeks to finish, because we only had afterhours and weekends to work on them, but it was so worth it and a lot of fun. We also learned tremendously and we will definitely do it again…but maybe not 6 of the same thing.

To find out more about how we created the tutu pattern read our blog posts from this series: “When your test pattern makes it on stage” and “Making our very first tutu”

Thanks for reading!

PS: The studio and on-stage photos are from the dance production “When Life Happens” by Les Danseuses Adult Ballet studio. Photographer: Carla Nel Photography.

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