English National Ballet: inside the costume department

We meet English National Ballet’s Costume team as they prepare for Romeo & Juliet, which visits Bristol Hippodrome from November 21-25.

Gerry Tiernan is costume department manager overseeing the work of English National Ballet’s costume department.
Serena Fusai is English National Ballet’s costumier and works on creating new costumes.
Symone Frost is the dyer and painter in English National Ballet’s costume department.

Gerry: Romeo and Juliet was created in 1977 and it was designed by Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino. It’s a beautiful production – it’s considered a beautiful antique. The production uses 385 costumes, with roughly 111 on stage each night.

Serena: My work ahead on these performances of Romeo & Juliet is to make the new costumes. We have several dancers dancing the role of Juliet and I have been working on their costumes as well as the costumes for those dancing Juliet’s Friends and the costumes worn in the Court scenes.

Sketches courtesy English National Ballet

Symone: As soon as we get casting for the performances we’ll do a fitting with the dancers. This allows us to decide what needs to be reproduced – we can take a look at the old costumes used in previous performances of the production to see if they are in good working order.
If we need to create replacement costumes, then we will have to dye all the fabrics we use to match the original costumes. The original costumes were produced in the 1970s and so it becomes really interesting from my point of view as we have to produce colours, not as they were back then, but as they now look – that’s a really interesting technique for me.

The Court Ladies

Serena: The costumes for Romeo & Juliet are not overly complicated from a cutting and making perspective – but they are full of decorations. So, the Court costumes that I’m making right now, for example, are decorated with flowers made up of single petals each attached one by one. Making a costume can take from two days to a week, depending on its complexity.

Costumes sketches for Juliet’s Friends

Symone: We are currently refurbing the Acrobat costumes – they looked quite tired from the last time we performed the production so we’ve decided that they need quite a lot of work. We’ve dyed all the fabric for the shirts and now I’m currently working on 11 pairs of tights, each of which need to be hand painted!

The Acrobats from ENB’s Romeo and Juliet. Photos: Laurent Liotardo

Serena: When I see the costumes I’ve made up on stage it’s a very nice feeling. It’s very emotional because you’ve been putting your passion into making something and then you see it on a beautiful dancer – and it’s just a joy.
Symone: I feel very proud of the work that we do on Romeo & Juliet. We’re always immensely critical of our work and looking for ways we can improve but overall I would say we’re terribly lucky to do our jobs.

English National Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet visits the Hippodrome from Nov 21-25. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.atgtickets.com/shows/romeo-and-juliet/bristol-hippodrome