Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2013 - 33

tical travel of the borders. The width and height of each system
were established to allow the horizontal and vertical travel an
equal amount of distance." This enabled one operator for each
cartridge to mechanically move both the legs and borders from
one line, in true Baroque fashion, without electronics. To make
the tree grow, "the theatre is equipped with a double-purchase
counterweight system. The tree drop is hung from the batten in
the house counterweight system," Phillips said.
The elaborate props were another important part of the
visual design. Clara travels by both boat and sleigh, in addition
to flying on the machine behind the dark cloud. At the end of
Act II, an elegant cutout of a carriage, drawn by horses with
fabulous plumes on their heads, enters across the rear of the
stage to take away the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker
Prince, before Clara and Drosselmeier fly back home. "The finale coach was inspired by a nineteenth century coach from
the Franz Joseph and Elizabeth collection in Vienna, " Perdziola said. Among the other props are oversized cocktail accessories-an olive speared on a stirrer is one-which serve as
weapons for the Mouse King and his troops.
As elaborate and detailed as the settings appear, the costumes might seem even more so. Although Perdziola says he does
not sew well, "I can drape. I had a lot of dolls growing up. That
was not looked upon kindly. I had five brothers. That sort of boy,
growing up with dolls was trouble, so I buried it. However, at college, if you wanted to work in costume, it was encouraged."
The Act I party scene is set in the 1820s, where the wom-

en wear "Jane Austen" Empire-line dresses, unlike the hoopskirted ball gowns of the earlier production. "Mikko wanted a
leaner silhouette for the costumes. The dresses are not cut like
actual ones. These have gored skirts that flare," Perdziola said.
The first act features an elegant and nuanced color palette of
browns, creams, and grays, with hints of pink and blue. In contrast, the Act II sets and costumes are an explosion of color.
The performers appearing as the Mouse King and the
Dancing Bear, a character special to the Boston Nutcracker,
wear animal suits made of fabric constructed to look like fur
from hundreds of brown-hued, horizontal ruffles stitched together. The Mouse King has plastic feet. "We made general sizes
of the plastic feet for most of the men," Charles Heightchew, the
Boston Ballet's longtime manager of costumes and wardrobe,
said. Perdziola noted that one of the Mouse King dancers was
exceptionally tall, and his feet would not fit the standard sizes.
So he was sent down to New York to have his feet molded and
the plastic feet custom fitted.
Some of the costumes, including those of the Act II Cavalier
and Harlequin, "had their trim placements done in great consideration of the dancers. The Cavalier tunic had each of the embroidery patterns hand drawn by Robert after the patterns were fitted
and corrected. The most direct design, according to the actual
body, is that for the Harlequin. We made sample unitards, and
Robert scaled the placement and size of each of the diamonds
during the fitting. This was later transferred to a paper pattern.
He had done the color rendering of the costume already, but for
the actual costume he wanted to make certain the scale of the
diamonds worked best for the men," Heightchew said.
One more requisite for The Nutcracker, or any ballet production, is the importance of designing costumes that move with
the dancers' bodies. In viewing the performance it's clear that
the costumes for the Waltz of the Flowers are one of Perdziola's
great successes in that regard. He chose for the fabric a pleated
polyester net from England that's dyed, painted in shades of
pink, and constructed in many layers. "You have to achieve a
lightness and rhythm. It takes a lot of thinking," he said.
Perdziola took on himself the huge job of picking the fabrics, although his assistant brought him swatches from certain
shops he frequents in the New York garment district. "But I
have trouble with a little sample. For major costumes, I have to
go myself. I need to open a bolt and see how it falls. If you have
a costume with layers, you open up the bolt and layer it to see
how it works," he said. Most of the fabrics were manufactured
in Germany, England, China, and the United States. Perdziola
drew and colored forty costume sketches, with countless smaller sketches in pencil.
Unlike the work on the settings, 175 of the 368 costumes
for The Nutcracker were made in-house at Boston Ballet's costume shop, under Heightchew's direction. Heightchew runs a
year-around costume staff of fourteen, including two drapers

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